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"barely have anything to show for it yet"

That's a very subjective statement. Some would argue that we've gained some knowledge from it so far. Look around the site and do a little online digging. You'll find that quite a bit of decent science has been done there. And we've discovered quite a few new things that were unexpected.

Speaking of things acting like on Earth and gravity and such. I think one of the big hurdles is going to be dealing with the dust, note the small images on the right. See also here and here.

Like an aging actor, NASA needs makeovers. Like any corporate giant NASA likes to tell success stories. NASA has an apparent target demographic of kids, students and educators. However, their real target demographic is the parents and grandparents of school aged children and adult science geeks. NASA must convince them, the voting public, that they're doing useful science. This market is similar to that faced by most educational toys.

As a corporate entity, NASA must look to the future. NASA cannot focus on boundad, workable, and term-limited projects such as the IIS, there will rapidly become no NASA. Such projects aren't as fundamentally entertaining, even if they may be more scientifically useful. NASA must continue to make plans to enhance future revenue by continuing to entertain their apparent target demographic, and appear to educate them in the eyes of their true demographic. NASA may be able to complete the IIS, but the IIS story has played out. They need something new and exiting, and they know it.

This is not written to slight NASA in any way. Every entity has its own economics. It's just that when I read stupid statements like the one made in the essay, I feel as if the author doesn't understand the fundamental economic position of NASA. NASA's primary job isn't human spaceflight, or spaceflight. It's to entertain while it educates. That's what brings in the money.

Like an aging actor, NASA needs makeovers. Like any corporate giant NASA likes to tell success stories. NASA has an apparent target demographic of kids, students and educators. However, their real target demographic is the parents and grandparents of school aged children and adult science geeks. NASA must convince them, the voting public, that they're doing useful science. This market is similar to that faced by most educational toys.

As a corporate entity, NASA must look to the future. NASA cannot focus on boundad, workable, and term-limited projects such as the IIS, there will rapidly become no NASA. Such projects aren't as fundamentally entertaining, even if they may be more scientifically useful. NASA must continue to make plans to enhance future revenue by continuing to entertain their apparent target demographic, and appear to educate them in the eyes of their true demographic. NASA may be able to complete the IIS, but the IIS story has played out. They need something new and exiting, and they know it.

This is not written to slight NASA in any way. Every entity has its own economics. It's just that when I read stupid statements like the one made in the essay, I feel as if the author doesn't understand the fundamental economic position of NASA. NASA's primary job isn't human spaceflight, or spaceflight. It's to entertain while it educates. That's what brings in the money.

... what 'great leap' is this? The only leap, really, is the change in vehicle. The moon is well-defined: we had the lunar prospector mission which gave us a detailed survey of the moons surface and we've been there several times in the Apollo era. Sticking around in LEO is just wasting time. Building satellites around the earth is completely different than building habitations on Mars or the Moon, structurally and in the complications faced ( micrometeoroids, gravity fields, dust and static charges, etc)

This is land (and launch pads) leased from the Wallops Island facility. NASA has been launching stuff from there for decades.

You are right, though it's my understanding that the land was actually purchased, along with rights-of-way enabling vehicular traffic to the now privatized (at taxpayer expense) launch area. But even if it is leased, it's a privatization paid for by the citizens of the area in order to boost employment, which is a kind of a boondoggle. This is another means of getting money from taxpayers.

Lease (or purchase) land as a government (but local this time) agency, using taxpayer money.
Create a government agency to "privately" launch satellites using taxpayer money.
Hire the same people being used in the other government site next door because, after all, they're actual rocket scientists using taxpayer money.
Buy something all ready purchased by the taxpayer from the taxpayers by using taxpayer money (a launch vehicle).
Get a contract from a military agency that all ready has launch capability (not being used) by using taxpayer money.
Do the launch by using taxpayer money.
Put out a big PR marketing piece about the success of the launch by using taxpayer money.

Do you see a trend here? Looks like the taxpayers just got boondoggled out of roughly double the amount of money it would have taken in order to just use Vandenburg -- or Wallops run by NASA or Cape Canaveral (which, as it is closer to the Equator is more efficient), also run by NASA. You have a "chase of taxpayer monies" to pay for stuff all ready created by the taxpayer monies, all to supposedly increase employment in an economically-depressed area.

Frankly, I think just sending a check to the people in the area so that they might use the money to move out of the area would be cheaper.

Can be found at: http://www.wff.nasa.gov/tacsat2/

No, this looks like a fiscal boondoggle to me. And with the recent change in the membership of the US House of Repesentatives and Senate, one wonders whether or not anything else will ever launch from there.

This is not a new construction. This is land (and launch pads) leased from the Wallops Island facility. NASA has been launching stuff from there for decades.

Best understanding of what is happening is here:

http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/data/LATEST/current _c3.gif

WARNING! 30 mb file, but one of the best proton storms I have seen and I check this site every day. And it probably needs to be mirrored.

-Luen

Cooler pictures will be coming soon...

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

Image of the referenced tsunami

Uh, no.

I've heard that even though it is calving a lot of icebergs these days, it's getting enough snowfall that the total ice in the antartic is actually increasing. It's just increasing in a different place than the icebergs are coming from.

My beach-front property on Baffin Bay will probably start to draw American and Ottawan tourists, with their pasty-white skin and bottled water.

But wait! I will corner the market on suntan oil and insect repellent before the wave of pale Southerners hits ... I will be wealthy beyond imagining!

My source for the Stratosphere cooling was NASA; I'm sure they'll be happy to know they've been discredited. However it is true that NASA's graph only goes back to 1979; it is certainly not evidence of a longer period. In a way, however, this is irrelevent: the fact is that unless the Sun is doing something now that it has not done at all in the past 400,000 years its effects can be predicted and taken into account of in the models. We have reasonably accurate data for CO2 concentrations especially but also temperature in the last 400,000 years, and they correlate pretty exactly (compare http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon_ Dioxide_400kyr_Rev_png with http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Ice_Age _Temperature_Rev_png). Historically, CO2 has oscillated from 190 to 290 ppmv with the ice age and Sun activity cycles; it is now 380 ppmv. Sorry, Sun activity cannot fully account for global warming.

The US probably won't release it because the blue nackground colour & white bunches of hex numbers are so embarrassing.

They should send sr71.rb instead. They've got dozens of those Habus in museums. A tank of fuel, literally a couple of hours, and they're delivered. Just add a handful of light missiles to each (shells are too slow) and you're away!

Here's a better link that explains "The above image is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites. "

NASA has been doing this for a long time now.
Sure RapidFire doesnt have the flashy web interface (actually i dont like the MIRAVI web site), but all the photos are there and up to date.

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/

http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/realtime/200634 1/

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/163756main_PIA0 9027_a_full.jpg

This pair tries to prove changes that occur on a given spot in 5 years. Right figure is lighter in general and there are additional clevices that are lighted up in the right figure. Seems to be that it is a combined effect of different position of the sun and different exposure (contrast, brightness).

The difference here is the definition of "recent". There is evidence of tens of thousands of gullys that have evidence of flowing water, for the *geological* definition of recent. In the sense that "It is obvious what happened here, this is what it looks like after water flows across the surface". "Recent" to a geologist means "within the last million years".

In this instance, we actually have photographic evidence, with one picture in 2001 and another in 2005 showing an actual change over the course of years, not millenia.

Water is flowing on the surface of Mars *now*. Granted, it is a rare event on a human timescale, with only two instances detected across on third of the planet's surface over a period of 5-6 years. But from a geologists perspective, we've moved from the realm of "recent" activity to "active" activity.

JPL has an awesome site up right now explaining the MGS team findings:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2006 -145

Your golf ball looks like a patch of sand dune at the bottom of a crater, sculpted by wind. See http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/oppor tunity/20040916a.html for something similar in Endurance Crater.

Looking to the near future, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Mars Reconnaissances Orbiter (MRO) delivers a more clear picture of whats going on up there...

True. Alternatives are *possible*. However, the trick is, the deposits do look different from other, known deposits produced by dust avalanches elsewhere on Mars, and, furthermore, the erosive channel systems above the deposits look consistent with a water interpretation and seepage from underground, rather than a "dry debris flow" interpretation (e.g., the channels converge at the top in tributary systems and meander towards the bottom on lower slopes, which is more characteristic of fluids than dry flows).

Here's the NASA press release with some pictures. There are many more pictures at the Malin Space Science Systems web site (they're the ones that ran the MGS until it was lost a few weeks ago). Also at the same time as the "possible water" press release, they were releasing information on recent cratering -- i.e. craters formed within the last few years. The published article is supposed to be in the Dec. 8 issue of Science, but it isn't released yet and you'll probably need a subscription to read it when it is.

the failure of the existential quest - that moment when we wake up one morning and realize that what we're doing has appallingly little value.

I spent the first three years after graduate school working on the "Trusted Mach" project. The code I wrote, three years of my professional life, now sits on a shelf somewhere at the NSA, never deployed.

After that I spent a year working on a firewall product for Norman Data Defense systems. Ever hear of it? Europeans may know Norman ASA for its antivirus software, but I believe the firewall had all of about six customers worldwide.

There are a few other projects where I'm not sure whether the code i wrote was ever deployed or not. I believe my work on EDOS helped sling around the bits received from the Terra and Aqua satellites, that brings me some comfort.

But I've spent a good chunk of my professional career writing code that ultimately made no difference to anyone. That's why I'm satisfied now to do part-time less complex software development work for a small business (where what I write gets deployed immediately, and if it doesn't change the world at least helps our customers), and work part-time as a shiatsu therapist (where what I do makes a definite impact).

A photo that Nasa published over a year ago already unquestionably demonstrated the existence of water on Mars, see http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap050401.html
(And if you're still not convinced you can even try this at home...)

He apparently had seen this stuff in mars rover pictures and predicted it.... guess nasa has finally came to the same conclusion.

Actually, the water is really the face on Mars crying.

Probably because of something you did.

I suppose you have to at least give them points for consistency.

There is plenty of reason to be skeptical of this *interpretation* of the images. For instance, pull up Figure B at http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/mars/images/pia0 9020.html. Now, in a separate, parallel window, open up the following image: http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/041126 craters-lab.htm

Can we really say for *sure* that this was an *impact*? Or were the craters formed by electrical discharge between the planet and an object as it fell towards the planet? This would explain the multiple impact craters and this is after all exactly what happened when a large copper ball was shot towards the Tempel 1 comet. I wonder if the "impacts" correspond to high points on the land? Nobody seems to be asking these sorts of questions because electricity is assumed to not be an important part of terraforming for the planets.

We have plenty of evidence already for electrical dust devils on Mars. Why is the electrical explanation consistently ignored when the morphologies appear almost identical?

There are all sorts of mysterious phenomenon on Mars that lose their mystery once you consider that electricity may be active on that planet.

Not all scientists are convinced that it was actually water.
 
"Many scientists believe the gullies were carved by liquid water, although others have argued they are due to avalanches of carbon dioxide gas or rivers of dust," from The New Scientist.
 
  Also, here is the NASA release from their site.

If you look at the high res images (from NASA here)
You can see the flow emerges from the side of an impact crater.
The water was most likely locked underground (as expected by the briney moist soil effect the rovers noticed just under the surface)

Its like diggign a hole in the sand at the beach, eventually water will start to seep in.

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/96/tpxerror.html

"Measurements of global sea-level rise from a U.S. instrument in space likely will be revised downward because of a recently discovered error in the data-processing software, mission scientists said. Initial indications are that sea-level measurements from the U.S. altimeter aboard the U.S.-French TOPEX/Poseidon satellite likely will agree more closely with Earth-based tide gauges, as well as with the French altimeter on the satellite. Preliminary findings from TOPEX/Poseidon data..., indicated the Earth's sea surface was rising ... more than 5 millimeters per year. Data collected from December 1992 to April 1996 have been updated and suggest that the new sea level rise estimate will be revised to 1 to 3 millimeters per year."

The recent speculation that man is causing global warming and that sea levels will suddenly rise is because of flawed computer models and flawed satellite data...and journalists and politicians being unprofessional. Let me through a few details at you.

In 2001, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, convened by the United Nations, said: "No significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise during the 20th century has been detected."

Professor Nils-Axel Morner, head of the Paleogeophysics and Geodynamics Department at Stockholm University and past president of the INQUA Commission on Sea Level Changes and Coastal Evolution, "Observational data obtained by our international team of experts shows conclusively that the sea level is not rising." "In the last 5000 years, global mean sea level has been dominated by the redistribution of water masses over the globe. In the last 300 years, sea level has been oscillation close to the present with peak rates in the period 1890-1930. Between 1930 and 1950, sea fell. The late 20th century lack any sign of acceleration. Satellite altimetry indicates virtually no changes in the last decade. Therefore, observationally based predictions of future sea level in the year 2100 will give a value of +10±10 cm (or +5±15 cm)."

"The data does not support any sea-level rise at all. ... There is no evidence, over the last century, that suggests there will be an acceleration in sea level" -- Wolfgang Scherer, the director of Australia's National Tidal Facility at Flinder's University in Adelaide.

In 1050, during the Medieval Warm Period, sea level was 25 centimeters higher than in 1650, during the Little Ice Age. Since 1650, sea level has been steadily rising at a rate of 1.8 mm per year.

Over the last 3,000 years, there have been at least 5 periods of "global warming". The Medieval Warm Period was from 800 AD to 1400 AD. It ended around 600 years ago. This was followed by the Little Ice Age that started 500 years ago and ended just over 100 years ago. Not surprisingly, Greenland just harvested its first barley in 600 years. Barley and grapes for wine were major crops in Greenland until 1400 AD.

Don't forget to understand the influence of the Maunder minimum and thermal haline.

Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, global average temperatures did not increase between 1998 and 2005. Yes, there was a period of warming between 1970 and 1998 - but there was also a similar period of warming between 1918 and 1940, well before the greatest phase of world industrialisation, and that cooling occurred between 1940 and 1964, at precisely the time that human emissions were increasing at their greatest rate. Of the 1.5 F in warming the planet experienced over the last 150 years, two-thirds of that increase occurred between 1850 and 1940.

The 1 degree increase in global temperature over the past century is nothing unusual. For example, the Medieval Warm Period, from A.D. 1000 to 1400, was warmer than the 20th century.

"We're going to go after a lunar base," said Scott Horowitz, NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. The lunar base will be the central theme in NASA's going back to the Moon effort, he said, in preparation to go to Mars and beyond.

"We're going to go after a lunar base," said Scott Horowitz, NASA associate administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate. The lunar base will be the central theme in NASA's going back to the Moon effort, he said, in preparation to go to Mars and beyond.

I really hope that this is for the long term. And by "they" i mean the politicians.

While the JFK speech that kicked of the first trips to the moons has its inspiring places ("We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win..."), I'm having a hard time imagining anybody planning anything beyond the next election.

Could we tie this into the War on Terror in someway?

So you, with absolutely no references and a head full of conspiracy theories, know better than NASA, the ESA, the NOAA, the WMO, and the EPA -- all of whom believe in the theory of anthropogenic ozone depletion caused by CFCs, and publish research that supports that theory?

Seriously, here in reality, science supports the theory of anthropenic ozone depletion. It supports the theory of anthropogenic global warming. It supports almost all the theories that scientists and environmentalists endorse, and that paranoid antigovernment sociopaths bitterly decry as attempts to destroy the US economy.

The ESA's research has found ozone-depleting clouds containing CFC-derived radicals. But Europeans are automatically wrong since they try not to fight unwinnable $500 billion dollar wars of attrition in the middle east anymore, right?

The NOAA is pretty sure that ozone depletion is caused by Humans. Are your tax dollars being used as part of a grand conspiracy to destroy America? Better start writing more threatening letters to the government.

NASA's ozone depletion FAQ. But everyone knows that NASA is a liberal conspiracy developed by socialists to undermine industrialism in all its forms.

To summarize: don't be such a fucking idiot. Anthropogenic ozone depletion is completely real.

First, I'd probably not write an OS-specific GUI database application when many frameworks already exist to make decent web-based database GUIs in minutes. See this film for how quickly some applications in Ruby, Python, and others can be brought up: http://oodt.jpl.nasa.gov/better-web-app.mov . (The main theme is that Java J2EE sucks for this purpose, and I agree.)

Second, supposing I DID do so, I would probably use Access on Windows and beat your speed claim by a factor of 2 at least. But if I could roll back time I could just as easily use Delphi, C++Builder, or PowerBuilder to do the same.

Now I have a challenge for YOU: get the VS editor to properly syntax highlight code in all of the following languages: Matlab, Perl, batch file (a.k.a. shell script), PHP, Python, Ruby, Lisp, C, C++, Java, and HTML, just for starters. Also make it recognize different indentation/whitespace rules for each language such that every source file looks exactly as you want it to.

Everyone has different priorities. I tried VS and it didn't work for me.

Now, there are some mission associated systems that are accessible from the internet which are storing spacecraft data. Here's one that has datasets from the acceleration system on the International Space Station:

http://pims.grc.nasa.gov/html/ISSAccelerationArchi ve.html [nasa.gov]

Well, let's see what we know about all this:

From the following pages:
[1] http://www.spaceandtech.com/spacedata/logs/2000/20 00-075a_eo-1_sumpub.shtml
[2] http://eo1.usgs.gov/index.php
[3] http://eo1.usgs.gov/products.php
[4] http://nmp.jpl.nasa.gov/st6/ABOUT/About_index.html

The Earth Observation 1 satellite was launched on the 21st of November 2001, to validate technology for the Landsat Data Continuity Mission. The satellite cost $193'000'000. As the mission approached its end, interest was expressed in keeping it up there to gather more pictures, and an agreement was formed between NASA and the United States Geological Survey to continue the EO-1 Program as an extended mission. Later, in early 2004, the group responsible for the original sending of the satellite decided to try a new thing called the "Autonomous Sciencecraft Experiment". This is the what the article above is talking about. So, they beam their program to the satellite, and make more than 100 photos while the thing is autonomous, tweaking the program many, many times in between. One of them happened to be useful and noticeable, and NASA made an article about it for the sake of PR. Now, according to [3], taking a single photo costs at most 500$, and that's with a bunch of add-ons. If by "more than 100" they mean 150 shots, that's still only 75'000$. In short, they used a satellite that should have sunk into disuse years before to test and tweak some AI using real data and a real satellite. I'd say that's actually a very efficient use of money. I mean, compared to sending yet another satellite just to do these experiments.

If a system is that important, and only has a single task, such as communicating with a spacecraft, why would it be accessible from outside sources?

Indeed. The article is pretty thin on what was actually compromised and what "manually communicating with spacecraft" really meant. Rule number 1 with mission critical systems at NASA (I work for them, but not at the locations attacked) is that they are *completely* walled off from the outside.

Now, there are some mission associated systems that are accessible from the internet which are storing spacecraft data. Here's one that has datasets from the acceleration system on the International Space Station:

http://pims.grc.nasa.gov/html/ISSAccelerationArchi ve.html

It's out there because that's the easiest way to get the data to researchers, many of whom are at universities around the world. I suppose if that server ended up hacked, it would hit the news as "Hacker brings down Space Station support system!". Sounds bad, but it's not like you can actually gain control of the spacecraft. I suspect the machines affected were used for this sort of purpose.

Hinode (SOLAR-B) is in may ways an upgrade to the previous Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) mission.

The main difference is that Hinode uses 4 megapixel cameras over the 1 megapixel cameras flown in other space-based solar observatories. (note -- ground based solar observatories have higher resolutiion cameras, but they can't observe these frequencies as x-rays can't make it past the atmosphere. (RHESSI observes in hard x-ray, but it's not a full-disk imager. SXI on GOES is full disk, but it's on soft x-ray)

Now, a couple of weeks after Hinode launched, STEREO also launched -- which is not only 4 megapixel cameras, but two observatories, and besides Ulysses, the first (two) solar observatories not in the sun-earth line. (I'm not a solar physicist, so I don't know what sort of instrumentation package Ulysses carried. Due to the flight path not staying a constant distance from the sun, and because our group doesn't track it*, I can only assume it's insitu and not remote sensing). The more impressive solar observatory will be the Solar Dynamics Observatory, aka SDO.

The reason that SDO is impressive, even though it's in the sun-earth line and isn't as useful as STEREO for solar weather, is that it will be flying 16 megapixel cameras. Because it will be in an inclined geosyncronous orbit, it will have its own ground station for constant data transfer at a full data rate without making use of the Deep Space Network. This allows it to not only send larger pictures, but more of them -- AIA will be taking images every 10 seconds. No space based solar observatory even comes close to that sort of a data rate. (STEREO is estimated at 1.5GB/day, while SDO will be 1TB/day)

* By 'our group', I'm referring to the Virtual Solar Observatory, for which I'm a programmer.
** Please be aware that these are the things that I hear in passing while doing my job. Although I think I'm right on all of this, it wouldn't hurt to get a second source that actually is a solar physicist and deals with the instruments directly.

Hinode (SOLAR-B) is in may ways an upgrade to the previous Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) mission.

The main difference is that Hinode uses 4 megapixel cameras over the 1 megapixel cameras flown in other space-based solar observatories. (note -- ground based solar observatories have higher resolutiion cameras, but they can't observe these frequencies as x-rays can't make it past the atmosphere. (RHESSI observes in hard x-ray, but it's not a full-disk imager. SXI on GOES is full disk, but it's on soft x-ray)

Now, a couple of weeks after Hinode launched, STEREO also launched -- which is not only 4 megapixel cameras, but two observatories, and besides Ulysses, the first (two) solar observatories not in the sun-earth line. (I'm not a solar physicist, so I don't know what sort of instrumentation package Ulysses carried. Due to the flight path not staying a constant distance from the sun, and because our group doesn't track it*, I can only assume it's insitu and not remote sensing). The more impressive solar observatory will be the Solar Dynamics Observatory, aka SDO.

The reason that SDO is impressive, even though it's in the sun-earth line and isn't as useful as STEREO for solar weather, is that it will be flying 16 megapixel cameras. Because it will be in an inclined geosyncronous orbit, it will have its own ground station for constant data transfer at a full data rate without making use of the Deep Space Network. This allows it to not only send larger pictures, but more of them -- AIA will be taking images every 10 seconds. No space based solar observatory even comes close to that sort of a data rate. (STEREO is estimated at 1.5GB/day, while SDO will be 1TB/day)

* By 'our group', I'm referring to the Virtual Solar Observatory, for which I'm a programmer.
** Please be aware that these are the things that I hear in passing while doing my job. Although I think I'm right on all of this, it wouldn't hurt to get a second source that actually is a solar physicist and deals with the instruments directly.

Hinode (SOLAR-B) is in may ways an upgrade to the previous Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) mission.

The main difference is that Hinode uses 4 megapixel cameras over the 1 megapixel cameras flown in other space-based solar observatories. (note -- ground based solar observatories have higher resolutiion cameras, but they can't observe these frequencies as x-rays can't make it past the atmosphere. (RHESSI observes in hard x-ray, but it's not a full-disk imager. SXI on GOES is full disk, but it's on soft x-ray)

Now, a couple of weeks after Hinode launched, STEREO also launched -- which is not only 4 megapixel cameras, but two observatories, and besides Ulysses, the first (two) solar observatories not in the sun-earth line. (I'm not a solar physicist, so I don't know what sort of instrumentation package Ulysses carried. Due to the flight path not staying a constant distance from the sun, and because our group doesn't track it*, I can only assume it's insitu and not remote sensing). The more impressive solar observatory will be the Solar Dynamics Observatory, aka SDO.

The reason that SDO is impressive, even though it's in the sun-earth line and isn't as useful as STEREO for solar weather, is that it will be flying 16 megapixel cameras. Because it will be in an inclined geosyncronous orbit, it will have its own ground station for constant data transfer at a full data rate without making use of the Deep Space Network. This allows it to not only send larger pictures, but more of them -- AIA will be taking images every 10 seconds. No space based solar observatory even comes close to that sort of a data rate. (STEREO is estimated at 1.5GB/day, while SDO will be 1TB/day)

* By 'our group', I'm referring to the Virtual Solar Observatory, for which I'm a programmer.
** Please be aware that these are the things that I hear in passing while doing my job. Although I think I'm right on all of this, it wouldn't hurt to get a second source that actually is a solar physicist and deals with the instruments directly.

Hinode (SOLAR-B) is in may ways an upgrade to the previous Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) mission.

The main difference is that Hinode uses 4 megapixel cameras over the 1 megapixel cameras flown in other space-based solar observatories. (note -- ground based solar observatories have higher resolutiion cameras, but they can't observe these frequencies as x-rays can't make it past the atmosphere. (RHESSI observes in hard x-ray, but it's not a full-disk imager. SXI on GOES is full disk, but it's on soft x-ray)

Now, a couple of weeks after Hinode launched, STEREO also launched -- which is not only 4 megapixel cameras, but two observatories, and besides Ulysses, the first (two) solar observatories not in the sun-earth line. (I'm not a solar physicist, so I don't know what sort of instrumentation package Ulysses carried. Due to the flight path not staying a constant distance from the sun, and because our group doesn't track it*, I can only assume it's insitu and not remote sensing). The more impressive solar observatory will be the Solar Dynamics Observatory, aka SDO.

The reason that SDO is impressive, even though it's in the sun-earth line and isn't as useful as STEREO for solar weather, is that it will be flying 16 megapixel cameras. Because it will be in an inclined geosyncronous orbit, it will have its own ground station for constant data transfer at a full data rate without making use of the Deep Space Network. This allows it to not only send larger pictures, but more of them -- AIA will be taking images every 10 seconds. No space based solar observatory even comes close to that sort of a data rate. (STEREO is estimated at 1.5GB/day, while SDO will be 1TB/day)

* By 'our group', I'm referring to the Virtual Solar Observatory, for which I'm a programmer.
** Please be aware that these are the things that I hear in passing while doing my job. Although I think I'm right on all of this, it wouldn't hurt to get a second source that actually is a solar physicist and deals with the instruments directly.

Hinode (SOLAR-B) is in may ways an upgrade to the previous Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) mission.

The main difference is that Hinode uses 4 megapixel cameras over the 1 megapixel cameras flown in other space-based solar observatories. (note -- ground based solar observatories have higher resolutiion cameras, but they can't observe these frequencies as x-rays can't make it past the atmosphere. (RHESSI observes in hard x-ray, but it's not a full-disk imager. SXI on GOES is full disk, but it's on soft x-ray)

Now, a couple of weeks after Hinode launched, STEREO also launched -- which is not only 4 megapixel cameras, but two observatories, and besides Ulysses, the first (two) solar observatories not in the sun-earth line. (I'm not a solar physicist, so I don't know what sort of instrumentation package Ulysses carried. Due to the flight path not staying a constant distance from the sun, and because our group doesn't track it*, I can only assume it's insitu and not remote sensing). The more impressive solar observatory will be the Solar Dynamics Observatory, aka SDO.

The reason that SDO is impressive, even though it's in the sun-earth line and isn't as useful as STEREO for solar weather, is that it will be flying 16 megapixel cameras. Because it will be in an inclined geosyncronous orbit, it will have its own ground station for constant data transfer at a full data rate without making use of the Deep Space Network. This allows it to not only send larger pictures, but more of them -- AIA will be taking images every 10 seconds. No space based solar observatory even comes close to that sort of a data rate. (STEREO is estimated at 1.5GB/day, while SDO will be 1TB/day)

* By 'our group', I'm referring to the Virtual Solar Observatory, for which I'm a programmer.
** Please be aware that these are the things that I hear in passing while doing my job. Although I think I'm right on all of this, it wouldn't hurt to get a second source that actually is a solar physicist and deals with the instruments directly.

Hinode (SOLAR-B) is in may ways an upgrade to the previous Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) mission.

The main difference is that Hinode uses 4 megapixel cameras over the 1 megapixel cameras flown in other space-based solar observatories. (note -- ground based solar observatories have higher resolutiion cameras, but they can't observe these frequencies as x-rays can't make it past the atmosphere. (RHESSI observes in hard x-ray, but it's not a full-disk imager. SXI on GOES is full disk, but it's on soft x-ray)

Now, a couple of weeks after Hinode launched, STEREO also launched -- which is not only 4 megapixel cameras, but two observatories, and besides Ulysses, the first (two) solar observatories not in the sun-earth line. (I'm not a solar physicist, so I don't know what sort of instrumentation package Ulysses carried. Due to the flight path not staying a constant distance from the sun, and because our group doesn't track it*, I can only assume it's insitu and not remote sensing). The more impressive solar observatory will be the Solar Dynamics Observatory, aka SDO.

The reason that SDO is impressive, even though it's in the sun-earth line and isn't as useful as STEREO for solar weather, is that it will be flying 16 megapixel cameras. Because it will be in an inclined geosyncronous orbit, it will have its own ground station for constant data transfer at a full data rate without making use of the Deep Space Network. This allows it to not only send larger pictures, but more of them -- AIA will be taking images every 10 seconds. No space based solar observatory even comes close to that sort of a data rate. (STEREO is estimated at 1.5GB/day, while SDO will be 1TB/day)

* By 'our group', I'm referring to the Virtual Solar Observatory, for which I'm a programmer.
** Please be aware that these are the things that I hear in passing while doing my job. Although I think I'm right on all of this, it wouldn't hurt to get a second source that actually is a solar physicist and deals with the instruments directly.

Hinode (SOLAR-B) is in may ways an upgrade to the previous Yohkoh (SOLAR-A) mission.

The main difference is that Hinode uses 4 megapixel cameras over the 1 megapixel cameras flown in other space-based solar observatories. (note -- ground based solar observatories have higher resolutiion cameras, but they can't observe these frequencies as x-rays can't make it past the atmosphere. (RHESSI observes in hard x-ray, but it's not a full-disk imager. SXI on GOES is full disk, but it's on soft x-ray)

Now, a couple of weeks after Hinode launched, STEREO also launched -- which is not only 4 megapixel cameras, but two observatories, and besides Ulysses, the first (two) solar observatories not in the sun-earth line. (I'm not a solar physicist, so I don't know what sort of instrumentation package Ulysses carried. Due to the flight path not staying a constant distance from the sun, and because our group doesn't track it*, I can only assume it's insitu and not remote sensing). The more impressive solar observatory will be the Solar Dynamics Observatory, aka SDO.

The reason that SDO is impressive, even though it's in the sun-earth line and isn't as useful as STEREO for solar weather, is that it will be flying 16 megapixel cameras. Because it will be in an inclined geosyncronous orbit, it will have its own ground station for constant data transfer at a full data rate without making use of the Deep Space Network. This allows it to not only send larger pictures, but more of them -- AIA will be taking images every 10 seconds. No space based solar observatory even comes close to that sort of a data rate. (STEREO is estimated at 1.5GB/day, while SDO will be 1TB/day)

* By 'our group', I'm referring to the Virtual Solar Observatory, for which I'm a programmer.
** Please be aware that these are the things that I hear in passing while doing my job. Although I think I'm right on all of this, it wouldn't hurt to get a second source that actually is a solar physicist and deals with the instruments directly.

I always had a bad feeling about that sunspot, but I never suspected it was the Eye of Sauron.

oddly beautiful .mpg of plasma arcing...