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And what do you read? Define 'smoke'. If you want to talk CO2, start here.
Then read this. Surprise! The volcano argument is lame.

Your post is exactly what I am talking about; I should have teed off on you instead of that other guy. You have a belief (loosely stated as my poop can't possibly be as stinky as moose poop) and have found support for it with a number that is, by any sane reading of the data, wrong. There's plenty of holes to poke in climate change science, but where the increased atmospheric and oceanic carbon is coming from ain't one of them.

General rant (sorry iminplaya, you're the straw and I'm the camel):

Every time a global warming story comes up, lots of readers throw out their own unsubstantiated (or more usually debunked) theories, without bothering with basic fact checking. Here, the parent is 'certainly interested' in geologic CO2 fluxes, but can't be bothered to search. Are geological CO2 fluxes being measured? Yes. It's called Wikipedia, people.

Sorry. But if someone throws out solar fluctuations as the primary reason for current warming one more time, I'm going to be very, very cross. Do some research.

Start here
Carbon flux- humans have thrown the net flux out of whack
The ocean is a carbon sink, thanks to us
Here's the carbon cycle. Lots of big fluxes, but we've tipped the balance

So Global Warming looks like a comet?

Yeah. Actually, It does. See, here's how it works. You preach enough Global Warming fire and brimstone and all the telescope money gets spent on worthless computer models. Hence, when a planet killer does show up out of the blue, the money that could have been spent on real science that could have saved us instead went to a stupid religion.

I have a question for you global warmers... Why don't you tell us how the planet managed to go into an ice age 450 million years ago when the CO2 concentrations were at 4400 PPM compared to our current 370... I'm waiting.

Could it be that CO2 is like a warm blanket. Keep adding CO2 and it's like adding blankets. Throw an extra blanket on your bed and you're warmer. Throw two extra blankets on your bed and you're warmer still. Throw an extra 30 blankets on your bed and you're not really that much warmer than you were with three blankets. Oh wait!! Fire and brimstone! Fire and brimstone!! And boogie men! Sleep under 30 blankets and you'll combust spontaneously! Oh my gawds, its teh global warmins!!

In comparison to the area of the laser beam on the moon's surface, the retroreflector is tiny, so the overall effect of the reflector should be small as well. Actually, the effect of the reflector is so incredibly small, that "Even under good atmospheric viewing conditions, only one photon is received every few seconds." according to this NASA bulletin. It also mentions that the beam diameter is 4 miles, approximately 130 million m^2, while the reflector is less than 1/4 m^2. The reflectivity of the retroreflector is not 500 million times better than that of the lunar surface (with an albedo of 0.12, ther can even theoretically only be an improvement by about a factor of 8), however, it quite likely is retroreflective in a much tighter angle.

What I'm saying is that receiving one photon every few seconds won't impress any of the "moon landing critics".

You are referring to the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, of course. It could be said that the LLRE returns a single-pixel image of a manmade object on the lunar surface.

it's impossible to find a stable orbit around the Moon due to the pull of Earth.

it's impossible to find a stable orbit around the Moon due to the pull of Earth.

... hurrying to prevent the news that the moon landing in fact never happened from coming out:

* Quick, launch that space junk towards the moon before LROC comes along !
* Oh, it seems that we couldn't photograph the landing site due to a metric conversion error.
* Giant moon storms have suddenly wiped out all evidence of any landing on the moon, what a coincidence eh ?
* OMG this is not the moon we landed on in 1969, we have been tricked !
* There is life there, but not as we know it - they made our moon landers disappear.
* OK, the moon landing was faked - see this little bunny, this funny little bunny ? Look how cute this little bunny is ! So cute !
* The russians did it !
* The chinese did it !
* The martians did it !
* The democrats did it !
* In a blatant act of time-terrorism, our moon landing was sabotaged and in fact never ever took place !
* Due to global warming, our moon landers have shrunk to microscopic size.
* Because we plan to go to the moon in a decade time again, we decided to clean the place up and remove all evidence of any moon landers. Neat eh ?
* Our moon landing was an advanced project, so advanced that we calculated the environmental damage the moon equipment would have on the moon would be enormous. Therefore we decided, back then in 1969, to make all equipment on the moon from bio-degradable plastics - and look : they have all degraded !
* The chance of a meteor hitting the moon is very large - by a mere coincidence meteors have struck the exact same places our moon equipment were at and removed all evidence of us ever being there.

This NASA press release says that NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (planned for 2008) will be the first time it's possible to take photos of the landers.

I seem to remember a photo from 1-2 years ago, though. It showed the shadow of the LEM and some nearby stuff (Surveyor?). Not enough resolution to resolve the objects themselves, but the sun was low on the horizon, creating huge shadows.

A discussion of the difficulty of imaging the landers and a picture: http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/11jul_lroc .htm

This is quite different from evidence from radar. We're talking about water that may have flowed in the last couple of years. (Not geological time. A few years here means less than ten.)

The Mars Express spacecraft, from the European Space Agency (ESA), has indicated to scientists that the dry atmosphere and surface on the planet Mars does not necessarily mean Mars is dry underneath the surface. In fact, a huge storehouse of water and carbon dioxide could be found in underground reservoirs.

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The exploratory mission of the Mars Express--whose name refers to the quickness of its design and manufacture and to the short relative distance it traveled between the Earth and Mars due to careful timing of the mission--originally consisted of the Mars Express Orbiter and the Beagle 2. On June 2, 2003, the spacecraft was launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan powered by a Soyuz-Fregata rocket. Unfortunately, after entering Mars orbit in December 2003 and deploying from the orbiting Mars Express Orbiter the Beagle 2 was lost on December 25, 2003, when it failed to communicate to the already-orbiting NASA Mars Odyssey. The ESA Mars Express team declared the Beagle 2 officially lost on February 6, 2004.

The Mars Express Orbiter continued its important science mission without Beagle 2. One of its first indications that Mars might possess underground water came in November 2005 when the MARSIS (Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding) experiment found the presence of underground water ice. MARSIS has the ability to remotely sense and record subsurface reflections; that is, it can analyze the composition of the ground beneath the surface of Mars (down to about five kilometers [three miles]), specifically with regards to the presence of frozen water.

Then, in 2007, ASPERA (Analyzer of Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms), another instrument onboard the Mars Express Orbiter, found that the rate of water loss on Mars is much lower than believed. Dr. Stanislav Barabash of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics (Kiruna, Sweden) headed a team whose research from the Mars Express Orbiter found the entire planet only loses about 20 grams of oxygen and carbon dioxide each second--a rate that was only about 1% of what was previously believed to be lost. If Barabash's discovery proves to be correct, then only a relatively miniscule amount of water and carbon dioxide would have disappeared over the past three to four billion years.

Barabash's team does not know what happened to this water. They surmise that it might have been removed through one or more currently unproven processes (such as dramatic asteroid and comet impacts, solar winds, or magnetic storms). Or, they also think that a possible scenario is that the water may still be on Mars, only stored underground. In fact, Barabash reported to New Scientist that: "We are talking about huge amounts of water. To store it somewhere requires a really big, huge reservoir."

Barabash and his colleagues report their findings on January 26, 2007, in Science magazine.

Scientists know that when Mars was a much younger planet it contained large amounts of liquid. However, scientists do not know where all of that liquid went. Mars Express and other spacecraft sent to explore Mars may soon find out. Future manned missions to Mars may find plenty of water to support humans and to provide hydrogen and oxygen for rocket fuel. Whether that occurs or not will only be found out sometime in the future--as more information is carefully and deliberately retrieved from Mars.

Information about the Mars Express mission is found at ESA's site: http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/index.htm l.

Information about the Mars Express mission can also be found at NASA's site: http://marsprogram.jpl.nasa.gov/express/.

The Home Web page of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics is located at: http://www.irf.se/.

Seriously...there's been a decent number of sightings of ice water on Mars including European Space Agency and again recently with NASA.

There's nothing new here. Stating a theory that perhaps less water has disappeared than previously thought? What's expected? Ice is known to have a lower planetary dispersion rate.

To add to all of this, it's scientifically reasonable to assume there should be fairly large quantities of water under the surface. Logic applies, we've seen landforms that support the belief of water having once been on mars, and we've got recent pictures to show some (likely a lot) is still there. Guess what, anybody who knows anything about dessert geography also knows that water naturally burrows below the surface. This is just putting 2+2 together.

What are they going to report on next, the discovery of Magnetic Fields and how they might exist on other planets?

We just launched STEREO not too long ago and both satellites are imaging the Sun in a number of wavelengths. One of the points of the mission is to image coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are the source of the charged particles which cause aurora.

CMEs can cause serious trouble:
-fry power grids on Earth
-interfere with instruments/avionics on airplanes
-lethal radiation dosage for astronauts
-damage satellites
-...

Pretty fisheye image of an aurora from a CME in 2004.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041109.html

STEREO homepage:
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

http://www.spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast07a pr_2m.htm

We just launched STEREO not too long ago and both satellites are imaging the Sun in a number of wavelengths. One of the points of the mission is to image coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are the source of the charged particles which cause aurora.

CMEs can cause serious trouble:
-fry power grids on Earth
-interfere with instruments/avionics on airplanes
-lethal radiation dosage for astronauts
-damage satellites
-...

Pretty fisheye image of an aurora from a CME in 2004.
http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap041109.html

STEREO homepage:
http://stereo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

http://www.spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ast07a pr_2m.htm

...during the winter, in the interior. Certainly in Iraq. Colder still in Afghanistan (which in fairness is not in the middle east, but it is the other current war.) It's a fair bet people are familiar with ice.

After reading the patent application it sure sounds like Microsoft has managed to patent the Golden Records sent out on the Voyager spacecraft back in to 1970's. Way to go US Patent Office.

Why get into another stupid global warming debate? Nasa's Earth science missions are among its most benefitial contributions to science in the US. Who cares if US CO2 is to blame, or about Kyoto, the fact is that the Earth's weather and geography are really complex and really interesting, and we should study them. It doesn't matter whether or not you think so called "global warming" is bogus or not, it's a fact that (a) weather and climate change over the years, and (b) it has direct consequences to human life TODAY.

One of the greatest effects that creation of NASA has had is to develop amazing Earth-observing technologies and sciences.

If the US government thinks that NASA has too big a budget, they should fund EO and other actual atmospheric and Earth science programs, and trim the Buck Rogers stuff.

How can understanding how our planet works and how we can better survive on it efficiently and effectively be some kind useless left-wing hippie treehugger nonsense? It's critical for the continuing survival of the massive and ever-increasing number of homo sapiens on this little rock in space.

Reed

PS. for some incredibly inspiring, beautiful, and interesting images, take a look at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images_index.php3.

To learn about real global climate and weather events with seriously real effects on human life TODAY, read some of the topics at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/.

Why get into another stupid global warming debate? Nasa's Earth science missions are among its most benefitial contributions to science in the US. Who cares if US CO2 is to blame, or about Kyoto, the fact is that the Earth's weather and geography are really complex and really interesting, and we should study them. It doesn't matter whether or not you think so called "global warming" is bogus or not, it's a fact that (a) weather and climate change over the years, and (b) it has direct consequences to human life TODAY.

One of the greatest effects that creation of NASA has had is to develop amazing Earth-observing technologies and sciences.

If the US government thinks that NASA has too big a budget, they should fund EO and other actual atmospheric and Earth science programs, and trim the Buck Rogers stuff.

How can understanding how our planet works and how we can better survive on it efficiently and effectively be some kind useless left-wing hippie treehugger nonsense? It's critical for the continuing survival of the massive and ever-increasing number of homo sapiens on this little rock in space.

Reed

PS. for some incredibly inspiring, beautiful, and interesting images, take a look at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images_index.php3.

To learn about real global climate and weather events with seriously real effects on human life TODAY, read some of the topics at http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/.

For those unaware (and /. editors too lazy to correct a memorial's name) James Webb was the head of NASA under whom the lunar missions were such a success. He was widely considered to be an excellent leader, both within NASA and in championing NASA in Washington DC. He was with NASA from 1961 to 1968 and died in 1992. In 2002 the planned "Next Generation Space Telescope" was renamed in his honor.

For more information on the man & the telescope see:

Wikipedia entry on James E. Webb at NASA

Wikipedia Entry on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

NASA page on James E. Webb

NASA website on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

For those unaware (and /. editors too lazy to correct a memorial's name) James Webb was the head of NASA under whom the lunar missions were such a success. He was widely considered to be an excellent leader, both within NASA and in championing NASA in Washington DC. He was with NASA from 1961 to 1968 and died in 1992. In 2002 the planned "Next Generation Space Telescope" was renamed in his honor.

For more information on the man & the telescope see:

Wikipedia entry on James E. Webb at NASA

Wikipedia Entry on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

NASA page on James E. Webb

NASA website on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)

The challenge of getting the data from Pluto, once it's acquired, is definitely non-trivial.

New Horizons has a total of 8 GB of redundant solid state (flash) memory to save data as it's taken. Divide that by the the 450 baud the parent mentioned, and you can see that to broadcast all of that data to earth would take about 7 months, not including overhead related to operating the probe and previewing the most important data.

In fact, New Horizons will perform it's observations of Pluto and Charon nearly continuously for several weeks before and after the closest approach, then spin to point at earth and broadcast nearly continuously for 9 months.

All of this to take what we've been able to discern of Pluto from this to essentially as good as this.

From JPL's "Basics of Space Flight"http://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/basics/bsf1-1.html :

Most planets rotate in or near the plane in which they orbit the Sun, again because they formed, rotating, out of the same dust ring. The exception, Uranus, must have suffered a whopping collision that set it rotating on its side.

*snicker*

their exact position today can be found in the JPL Horizons database
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi

so using Sol as Origin [0,0,0], with distance in km and km/s velocity measures:
XYZ position and velocity in Km and Km/sec
V prefix = velocity,

Jupiter
A.D. 2007-Jan-19 00:00:00.0000 (CT)
  X =-3.523007925524937E+08 Y =-7.203651223053448E+08 Z = 1.087397270750013E+07
  VX= 1.158611696091788E+01 VY=-5.127849980674650E+00 VZ=-2.378734986696975E-01

Earth
  A.D. 2007-Jan-19 00:00:00.0000 (CT)
  X =-7.005151113800500E+07 Y = 1.294518808525130E+08 Z =-1.647040773451328E+03
  VX=-2.669513206382950E+01 VY=-1.429493892074527E+01 VZ=-5.052885705412180E-04

And the Horizons probe itself is here:
A.D. 2007-Jan-19 00:00:00.0000 (CT)
  X =-3.141011231236297E+08 Y =-6.673772181265557E+08 Z = 9.200702373118341E+06
  VX= 1.154291925552546E-01 VY=-1.978644188955009E+01 VZ= 1.493924692614632E-01

However it's too early to work out the times taken for signals to travel based on these positions. I need more coffee.

This is not new.
Remember those first stunning panoramic pictures from Mars decades ago?
They were taken with a single-pixel camera.
NASA used a single-pixel camera on its Viking Mars lander, which launched in 1975!
http://history.nasa.gov/SP-425/ch3.htm

You can't explore a galaxy with a handful of probes. 72 probes??? First of all, if you're going to do it that way, you'd create hundreds of thousands of probes, if not millions of probes (mass production would reduce the cost). Second, you still probably wouldn't do it that way. You'd wait until you had the technology to make self-replicating probes, and the galaxy could potentially be explored in thousands of years.

Not impressed by this guy's argument.

Firstly, regardless of how many probes you have, how they communicate information back is still limited by the speed of light, at least a civilization of our present technology level. The radius of the milky way is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 light years. Assuming you start from galactic center, and travel at 1/10 LS, we are talking 600,000 years for two probes to reach each end, and another 60,000 for them to communicate back. IF someone is on one of the spiral arms, this figure doubles.

Secondly something voyager sized is about 1000kg if I recall correctly, somewhere between 500kg and 1000. Do do something as you reccomend it, with self replication, we are talking the mass of several planets. Not to speak of fuel requirements, and the issue of not knowing exactly where one can get raw materials. Probally somewhere near the galactic unhabitable zone.

The guy's argument is perfectly valid, the galaxy is big, getting from point a to point b is slow. The biggest issue is speed.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.h tml
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/images/f23.gif

You can't explore a galaxy with a handful of probes. 72 probes??? First of all, if you're going to do it that way, you'd create hundreds of thousands of probes, if not millions of probes (mass production would reduce the cost). Second, you still probably wouldn't do it that way. You'd wait until you had the technology to make self-replicating probes, and the galaxy could potentially be explored in thousands of years.

Not impressed by this guy's argument.

Firstly, regardless of how many probes you have, how they communicate information back is still limited by the speed of light, at least a civilization of our present technology level. The radius of the milky way is somewhere in the neighborhood of 60,000 light years. Assuming you start from galactic center, and travel at 1/10 LS, we are talking 600,000 years for two probes to reach each end, and another 60,000 for them to communicate back. IF someone is on one of the spiral arms, this figure doubles.

Secondly something voyager sized is about 1000kg if I recall correctly, somewhere between 500kg and 1000. Do do something as you reccomend it, with self replication, we are talking the mass of several planets. Not to speak of fuel requirements, and the issue of not knowing exactly where one can get raw materials. Probally somewhere near the galactic unhabitable zone.

The guy's argument is perfectly valid, the galaxy is big, getting from point a to point b is slow. The biggest issue is speed.

http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/interstellar.h tml
http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/images/f23.gif

Great. Now explain why the same thing is happening on Mars, Triton, and Pluto.

Go ahead, I'll wait.

A little while ago there was a proposal to launch small orbiting "parasols" that would reflect solar heat and help stop global warming (http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/MediaAl erts/2006/2006110323537.html). As proposed, they would be spacecraft with circuitry, but the proposal did call for electromagnetic launching (i.e., railguns). I would think you could also send reflectors without circuitry; they would be reflective chaff, and they would need more frequent replacement, but what the heck. Railguns are loads cheaper than rockets.

This should explain the concept that we're talking about.

The basic idea is that, if you want to change the altitude of an orbiting object at a certain point, you need to give it a push ON THE OTHER SIDE of the planet the object is orbiting (you want a lower altitude over china, you need to decrease speed over america).

If you change the velocity the bullet exits the muzzle of the cannon (or the railgun or whatever), you are making the bullet go higher/lower at the other side, and then hitting the cannon faster/slower when it returns. That is, unless it reaches escape velocity (it'll never return) or hits the planet. To circularize the orbit (basically to make the bullet go higher over the cannon), you need to give it a push when it's on the other side of the planet, that's what the rocket is for.

The MCO MIB has determined that the root cause for the loss of the MCO spacecraft was the failure to use metric units in the coding of a ground software file, "Small Forces," used in trajectory models. Specifically, thruster performance data in English units instead of metric units was used in the software application code titled SM_FORCES (small forces). A file called Angular Momentum Desaturation (AMD) contained the output data from the SM_FORCES software. The data in the AMD file was required to be in metric units per existing software interface documentation, and the trajectory modelers assumed the data was provided in metric units per the requirements.

The MCO MIB has determined that the root cause for the loss of the MCO spacecraft was the failure to use metric units in the coding of a ground software file, "Small Forces," used in trajectory models. Specifically, thruster performance data in English units instead of metric units was used in the software application code titled SM_FORCES (small forces). A file called Angular Momentum Desaturation (AMD) contained the output data from the SM_FORCES software. The data in the AMD file was required to be in metric units per existing software interface documentation, and the trajectory modelers assumed the data was provided in metric units per the requirements.

'risk' isn't quite what people are making it out to be. Risk is the fact that a methane engine hasn't been built and operated before. By building and operating a methane engine, and improving its design (making it regeneratively cooled, using cryogenic methane as a fuel, passing x-thousand lights without incident, etc) reduces its relative risk.

NASA uses a scale called Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) which you can read about if you like. Operating this device and documenting it can help raise the TRL of methane engines.

Additionally, it is a 'risk reduction' effort because it could be a replacement for the engine of the CEV which right now is (I think) kerosene+LOX. If that falls through for some reason (what, I don't know...) there is a second option on the table. Again, reducing risk.

And yes, according to Zubrin, we can manufacture methane on Mars where the CEV will be headed in 15-20 years, so an adaptation of this might be a retrofit to the CEV someday. (but please, be critical thinkers when you read Zubrin...)

That is all.

NASA's mandate is to put stuff in space when we need stuff put in space.

(b) The Congress declares that the general welfare and security of the United States require that adequate provision be made for aeronautical and space activities. The Congress further declares that such activities shall be the responsibility of, and shall be directed by, a civilian agency exercising control over aeronautical and space activities sponsored by the United States, except that activities peculiar to or primarily associated with the development of weapons systems, military operations, or the defense of the United States...

In other words, if it ain't military and it goes into space, it's NASA's job to put it there.

Furthermore, earth science is very much a part of NASA's mission:

(d) The aeronautical and space activities of the United States shall be conducted so as to contribute materially to one or more of the following objectives:

(1) The expansion of human knowledge of the Earth and of phenomena in the atmosphere and space;

That's taken directly from National Aeronautic and Space Act, which established NASA.

Of course... but that still represents what NASA "wants" to do as a matter of policy ...regardless of whether or not it was passed. Here is the 2006 budget request.

Second, the NASA budget is essentially fixed. There are 4 directorates within NASA:

• Aeronautics (conventional aircraft-related research)
• Science (satellites and probes)
• Space Operations (funding to maintain shuttle and station)
• Exploration
  • COTS (Funding commercial space to provide space transportation capability (non-exploratory)
  • Constellation (Ares/Orion/LSAM - the vehicles that will both replace shuttle as well as comprise the lunar architecture)

• A) Cut shuttle off early and leave ISS unfinished and have an 6-7 gap in manned space flight?
• B) Delay Exploration development until the shuttle is retired (similar gap in manned space flight since you are just pushing development to the right)?
• C) Or do you delay science missions for only a few years until NASA is "over the hump years" (2008-2010) in which they are trying to maintain old vehicles and develop new ones?

If you ask me - the obvious solution is:

D) Increase NASA funding to maintain all of the above until Ares/Orion enters an operations phase.

Keep in mind - the NASA budget is about half of one percent of the federal budget...

Note: you can mock the lunar outpost and Mars missions all you want - but those costs aren't even in the budget yet (and won't be for some 10 years or more) and are not driving this "problem" despite the misleading claims in the article.

How much of the Earth do you think DigitalGlobe images each year? (~3%) How much does NASA image each day? (>90%). Granted it's at different resolutions, but that underscores the point that NASA's remote sensors have different capabilities than DigitalGlobe's (or GeoEye's). Next question: who buys most of the high-resolution commercial satellite data? (The U.S. government via the Department of Defense(in fact, the DoD and congress forbid NASA from making high-res observations)). Do you think NASA's satellites are better calibrated than the commercial sensors, which is critical for studying long-term trends? Maybe NASA is capable of taking many more types of measurements, with spaceborne radars, lidars, scatterometers, thermal infrared sensors, gravity sensors, etc?

Have you ever tried to buy an acquisition from DigitalGlobe? Do you have $10,000? If you have more questions, read the NRC report itself:
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11820& page=1
or read about NASA's current Earth science research:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/

I hope you're kidding. You're assuming that the rate of loss is constant, which it is certainly not. Aside from warming factors in general, this warmth melted ice on the surface, forming pools. This water then trickled down through the ice, widening crevasses as it went, thus fracturing the shelf or alowing it to move, and shatter. Take a look at Larsen Shelf in the Antarctica. This is a shelf larger than Rhode Island. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1022-06.ht m http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImage s/images.php3?img_id=4562 http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/planetearth/ ice_melt_010117.html

Has nobody heard of WorldWind from NASA. They were publishing similar data way before Google got on board...

http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/

First release August 2004!

Perhaps NASA could be doing more to prevent...

Dave

Actually, most of the imagery used by Google Earth is satellite images from Landsat, topography from SRTM, and aerial images from USGS - all viewable in 3-D using NASA's educational WorldWind program.

Program: http://worldwind.arc.nasa.gov/
Community: http://www.worldwindcentral.com/

WorldWind was available before Google Earth was born, but it was not marketed into news headlines. WorldWind does not limit your local cache size the way Google Earth does, so you can download the whole multi-terabyte Landsat and SRTM datasets if you are so inclined. It is also extendable by user add-ons, of which many exist. WorldWind links to cartographic and placename databases, and also provided alternate planets before Google Earth, and now includes the Moon, Mars, Venus, and Jupiter (via NASA mission data), as well as the night sky (via SDSS imagery).

Google Earth adds commercial non-US aerial images to the freely-available data used by WorldWind, and links to various commercial directories and maps, but is otherwise a follower of WorldWind rather than a leader.

Google is the new AskSlashdot. Nasa has a web site that will show you graphically as well as give you more detailed ephemeral data:
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/horizons.cgi

Harvard also has raw data.
http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iau/Ephemerides/Comets/ 2006P1_1.html

Well count me a loony, but I sure do believe in cosmic rays.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/p ia09105.html shows the rover. See this link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/p ia09105.html for all of the images.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/p ia09105.html shows the rover. See this link: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/multimedia/p ia09105.html for all of the images.

The article links to a downsized picture. If you really want in on the fun, download the 6.2 MB full size image from the MRO website.

The Pathfinder lander itself is labeled MPF. It's about 2/3 of the way across the image (to the right) and perhaps 500 pixels from the top. It appears lighter than the surrounding material, roughly triangular in shape, and has a slight shadow to the right.

I'm not sure which point they think is the adorable little Sojourner (pic of mockup next to Spirit and Odyssey on earth), but I think it's the two light grey pixels with a shadow about 15-20 pixels north of Pathfinder. That may just be one of the rocks it studied, though.

The parachute and backshell are also labeled. The round object is the aerodynamic backshell that covered the top of the lander during entry. It is attached to the parachute, which is draped over the ground a few meters northeast.

The think the heatshield fragments are pretty self-explanatory, although I'm unsure why it's so scattered. It must have broken up, probably tumbling, shortly after being released.

The distribution of parts around the landscape makes some sense if you know how it landed. Pathfinder entered the Martian atmosphere at about 17,000 mph. It aerobraked using the heatshield down to about 900 mph. After two minutes, the parachute deployed and the heat shield was released. The lander was then lowered on a tether so it would be clear of the backshell. 8 seconds before touchdown, the airbags inflated and retrorockets fired. 2 seconds before touchdown, the tether was cut, with the retrorockets carrying the backshell safely away from the lander, and the Pathfinder bounced down onto its airbags.

I think the Pathfinder payed for itself just in coolness (come on...airbags! Who thinks this stuff up?). Add science and engineering lessons learned, and this mission is priceless.

The article links to a downsized picture. If you really want in on the fun, download the 6.2 MB full size image from the MRO website.

The Pathfinder lander itself is labeled MPF. It's about 2/3 of the way across the image (to the right) and perhaps 500 pixels from the top. It appears lighter than the surrounding material, roughly triangular in shape, and has a slight shadow to the right.

I'm not sure which point they think is the adorable little Sojourner (pic of mockup next to Spirit and Odyssey on earth), but I think it's the two light grey pixels with a shadow about 15-20 pixels north of Pathfinder. That may just be one of the rocks it studied, though.

The parachute and backshell are also labeled. The round object is the aerodynamic backshell that covered the top of the lander during entry. It is attached to the parachute, which is draped over the ground a few meters northeast.

The think the heatshield fragments are pretty self-explanatory, although I'm unsure why it's so scattered. It must have broken up, probably tumbling, shortly after being released.

The distribution of parts around the landscape makes some sense if you know how it landed. Pathfinder entered the Martian atmosphere at about 17,000 mph. It aerobraked using the heatshield down to about 900 mph. After two minutes, the parachute deployed and the heat shield was released. The lander was then lowered on a tether so it would be clear of the backshell. 8 seconds before touchdown, the airbags inflated and retrorockets fired. 2 seconds before touchdown, the tether was cut, with the retrorockets carrying the backshell safely away from the lander, and the Pathfinder bounced down onto its airbags.

I think the Pathfinder payed for itself just in coolness (come on...airbags! Who thinks this stuff up?). Add science and engineering lessons learned, and this mission is priceless.

Here's a link to the image posted the MRO site. Full 6.3MB JPEG! http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mro/gallery//press/200701 10a/picture-3.jpg

it it almost certainly cheaper to build and launch a new satelite then it is to send someone up to fix this one.