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you'd think they could devote some of their time to have someone simply set all the clocks on all the hardware for the time of that night's transition

or point the software at an NTP server and set that to the time it transitions.

Considering that we give NASA less than we give the National Park Service, it's utterly dumbfoundingly breathtaking what they are able to accomplish.

It also doesn't hurt that the shuttle software engineers are a totally different breed. Or more to the point, the way they write software is totally different. This is a good writeup about why.

http://flightlinux.gsfc.nasa.gov/ It seems indicated that they do indeed run Linux.

If there is going to be a terrorism icon, it should be one that stands on its own and captures the essence of the subject, like maybe this explosion. If that is a little too "spot on", then maybe some dynamite. It should not be something used to represent another subject area, including:

Censorship
Privacy
Big Brother
Republicans
Democrats

The particular flavor of extremists providing most of fodder for discussion on Slashdot have goals independent of the often petty political squabbles here.

Yeah, we did. It's called Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. As an engineer who worked on MRO, I can tell you we learn from all of our previous spacecraft - successes and failures. While it is possible we may not restore contact with MGS, MRO will return more scientific data than all of NASA's previous Mars missions combined.

Runs in the family; Opportunity is comtemplating suicide:

http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/gallery/press/oppor tunity/20061019a/Sol952B_P2388_L257atc_withNewRove r_v008-B993R1_br2.jpg

Eww, it looks like a butthole.

Working with US satellite programs, I have come to realize how hard it is to actually take care of a bird in flight. There are so much junk flying around in space that could take out your satellite, not to mention things like solar storms and such, all this you have to track and adjust for. Of course, something's you don't see coming.

http://nasaexplores.nasa.gov/show2_articlea.php?id =01-074

In addition, a satellite can go anywhere from 500 degrees to -500 degrees in a single orbit. Even with all this, more often then not satellites are lasting years beyond their expected life.

So give 'em a break...

mr2cents - it's been done before and while the timing is no doubt a bitch, it's quite possible.

linky
One Mars Orbiter Takes First Photos of Other Orbiters

Photographs from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft released today are the first pictures of any spacecraft orbiting Mars ever taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars.

The new images of the European Space Agency's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Odyssey are available on the Internet from NASA at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mg s-images.html and from Malin Space Science Systems, the San Diego company that built and operates the camera, at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/05/19/ind ex.html .
 

Of course, if all they see is a smear of debris, well I guess they know they won't be getting any more data.

mr2cents - it's been done before and while the timing is no doubt a bitch, it's quite possible.

linky
One Mars Orbiter Takes First Photos of Other Orbiters

Photographs from NASA's Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft released today are the first pictures of any spacecraft orbiting Mars ever taken by another spacecraft orbiting Mars.

The new images of the European Space Agency's Mars Express and NASA's Mars Odyssey are available on the Internet from NASA at http://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/mg s-images.html and from Malin Space Science Systems, the San Diego company that built and operates the camera, at http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2005/05/19/ind ex.html .
 

Of course, if all they see is a smear of debris, well I guess they know they won't be getting any more data.

Sorry, forgot the actual relevant link! http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answer s/980310c.html

NASA's planed [space.com] return to the moon is 2018. A few bad schedule slips at NASA could see Americans following Indians back to the moon. Both sides get bonus points for an Indian American on either mission.

The US is pursuing specific plans to get back to the moon that include a hydrogen fueled heavy lift vehicle a crew exploration vehicle and a lunar lander. Details like this are completely missing from Russian, Chinese, and Indian press releases on their space programs.

NASA's planed [space.com] return to the moon is 2018. A few bad schedule slips at NASA could see Americans following Indians back to the moon. Both sides get bonus points for an Indian American on either mission.

The US is pursuing specific plans to get back to the moon that include a hydrogen fueled heavy lift vehicle a crew exploration vehicle and a lunar lander. Details like this are completely missing from Russian, Chinese, and Indian press releases on their space programs.

It is here!

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/162164main_eit1 95.gif

This gif shows a massive solar flare from October 2003, captured by the SOHO satellite. Note the burst of high-speed particles after the flare creating a snowstorm effect. The stellar flare that Swift detected from a star system called II Pegasi was millions of times more powerful. Credit: NASA-ESA/SOHO/EIT

You are right; Swift does detect in the optical bands as well. (list of instruments on Swift) I guess it would have been better stated if I had said that Swift is not designed to use optical for finding these types of events. Gamma and x-ray tell us more about flares at this distance than visual data does. I suppose any of these frequencies could be overlayed in an x-y coordinate system to show intensity increases in a physical region, but as you pointed out, at this distance that would not be very interesting to look at. More information would be gained by looking at peaks on frequency graphs.

Heres some pics of solar flares.

None are the one FTA, but it probably looks like these, only shaped like some sort of a monster.

Here is the NASA link to this item:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/swift/bursts/mon ster_flare.html

I really wish slashdot would just link the real news item instead of the crappy ones it always seems to find. There wasn't even an image on the one they linked.

I like this one too.

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

Bada boom

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Study/HeatBucket/ heatbucket3.html

Modelled ocean heat storage vs observed values.

Let's see, on one hand we have an article that is full of utter nonsense. (Right, you expect me to believe - without any references - that the Chinese sailed the Arctic in 1421 and didn't find any ice?) On the other hand, we have NASA. I hope you'll forgive me if I choose to believe NASA over a bunch of loons who like to invent their own facts.

* Monckton categorically states that the temperature of the oceans has decreased, without using sources.

Over what period? The oceans *have* cooled significantly since 2003. Similar rapid cooling also occured in 1980-1983.

However, this is a fraction of the heating oceans have gained over the previous 50. Furthermore, sea level hasn't gone down since 2003, it's slightly gone up, suggesting that sea level rise has recently shifted from being mostly caused by warming to being dominated by melting of ice. And here's areference.

Thanks for the link. I'd never even heard of HAL/S before. Interesting stuff!
Somehow your link got a bit screwed up, so here it is again:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/computer s/Appendix-II.html

Here is a decent source of HAL/S examples:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/computer s/Appendix-II.html

There's a bug in the third line of the collision_check procedure ("DELCARE" instead of "DECLARE").

You neglect the fact that military/gov't programming languages at this time included HAL/S, Jovial, NELIAC, &c. (Yes I know that Jovial is still in use for the Navy's ITS 8/16bit muControllers). I've used XPL (the language that the HAL/S compiler was written in) & HAL/S; It was basically the predecessor to Ada/SPARK's 'provability' & 'stability'.
Here is a decent source of HAL/S examples:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/computer s/Appendix-II.html

Now, look at the procedure called 'read_accel', about 1/4 down the page.
Midway through, there is a ton of gunk. That's the HAL/S maths for you:
the program is allowed to use three lines to express mathematical code, to 'mimic' math
in code. Now, this is the '70s; it's of little wonder that they weren't worried about the
date switch so much as making sure that:
1) the compiler produced code that could be checked & double checked to be '100%' failure proof and at least be resilient to problems.
2) It had to deal with the beast of being machine independent & easily understandable to the PL/I & FORTRAN programmers of the day
3) It also had to make sure that tasks were scheduled properly & run when specific interrupts happened. This is the Norm for Ada/SPARK now, but HAL/S was pretty much the pioneer here within the Aerospace field.

You're missing that they were designed in the 70s - a little before debian existed: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/shuttle/reference/shut ref/orbiter/avionics/dps/gpc.html

What is the issue is is this a natural process, a man-made process or a combination?

Why is that the issue? Are we looking to assign blame?

The point is to figure out what (if anything) should be done based on what's happening. If global warming is caused primarily by mankind releasing carbon dioxide into the atmostphere, then it would behoove us to reduce our carbon dioxide emissions to control global warming. OTOH, if global warming is mostly a result (for example) the earth receiving more energy from the sun, then reducing carbon dioxide emissions will have only minimal effect.

It should also be pointed out that while most people generally take for granted that nearly everything we do releases carbon dioxide and therefore leads to global warming, that's a bit one-sided. Just for example, burning coal not only releases carbon dioxide but also generally releases at least some sulfur. Sulfur in the atmosphere causes global cooling (i.e. it does more to reflect energy from the sun back out of the atmosphere than to trap energy from the sun in the atmosphere). If you compare sulfur release into the atmosphere to the global temperature, you get a fairly close (inverse) correlation. That would support an argument that most of the arguments over global warming have things backwards: rather than currently causing global warming, the real situation could be that we (mankind) were mostly responsible for the mini-iceage by burning sulfur-bearing coal. In the last few decades we've reduced coal usage and (particularly) reduced emissions when we do use it (e.g. most power plants now have equipment to remove sulfur from their emissions). What we're seeing as global warming is really just the earth recovering back to about where it would have been if we hadn't been causing global cooling for centuries.

Likewise, many people (including some here) have suggested that planting trees as an obvious cure. Simple solutions to complex problems sound nice, but (as in this case) things are rarely as simple as they initially appear. Much of the loss of rain-forest that's often cited is largely illusory. While it's true that what's classed as rain-forest has been reduced (somewhat) the losses are often at least partially offset in terms of overall wooded land. Taking a look at the UN's FAO data we see that while the forest land in South America dropped by about .4% annually between 1990 and 2005, when/if we take the other wooded area into account, the loss is really about .2% annually (they don't provide totals/percentages for the other wooded areas -- you have to cut-n-paste into a spreadsheet yourself to get those).

There are also problems with the idea itself. For one, large plantations of trees cause some environmental problems themselves. For another, depending on the latitude at which they're grown, trees can actually contribute to global warming.

Neither the problem, nor its cause, nor "the" solution is nearly as clear or certain as many would have you believe.

And we have.

That's why we are on scenario B and C, not on the cataclysmic scenario A.

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/edu/gwdebate/00fig1.gif

That was my exact thought. However good or bad the *numbers* might be, it's rather hard to refute the fact that the Arctic ice cap is something like 40% smaller than 50 years ago (and yes I'm making those specific numbers up) linky.

And while most of the "it's a bad thing crowd" is probably overreacting somewhat...the consequences of *not* overreacting if indeed it's true are pretty scary.

Global Warming on Mars... hmm.. I wonder if it has to do with the sun...

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/CO 2_Science_rel/index.html

Anyway, a few specific details he misuses. From his supplementary pdf:

"Sidelooking radar interferometry shows that the ice mass in the West Antarctic is growing at a rate 18 estimated at 26.8 gigatons per year, reversing a melting trend that has persisted for 6,000 years (Joughin et al., 2002)."

From http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1766064.stm:

"The ice sheet has been retreating for the last few thousand years, but we think the end of this retreat has come," says Dr Joughin. But he said it would be a mistake to assume any threat of the ice sheet collapsing was completely removed.

"Some of the concern about the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet is lessened, but I hesitate to say we can stop worrying about it."

He said the research only covered a relatively small area, over a short period of time and it was possible that what they were detecting was a minor fluctuation.

He pointed out that there were other areas in West Antarctica where the ice was thinning significantly, such as the Pine Island Glacier and the Thwaites Glacier.

Monckton isn't exactly being honest in the way he's citing that one, is he?

And to refute his argument that the mass of ice in Antarctica is increasing, there's this item from NASA (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=200 6-028) that says the overall mass of ice is decreasing.

The objective was to illustrate the broad range of possibilities in the ignorance of how forcings would actually develop. The extreme scenarios (A with fast growth and no volcanos, and C with terminated growth of greenhouse gases) were meant to bracket plausible rates of change.

Just the facts...
NASA "Science, Aeronautics, and Exploration"
$10 Billion

DoD (Department of Defense)
$420 Billion

So about 42x more for DoDO (Department of "Defense" operations) than for NASA in fiscal year 2006 (completed).

Hi, welcome to slashdot.

I love this logic:

1. The climate has always been variable.
2. Therefore, man is not having an impact on today's climate!

QED, right?

Here's an exercise: Explain to me how increased levels of CO2 (which are rising due to humans- I challenge you to find an explanation that has not been debunked from here to Shanghai and back), which Arrhenius demonstrated over 100 years ago could cause climate change, can't possibly be causing climate change?

Hey, climate science is uncertain, and questioning it's results are fine. But if you are going to do so, please find a coherent argument why the current thinking is incorrect (again, please stick to the stuff that hasn't been shown to be wrong 100x over). So please go read RealClimate, debunk them, and then we can talk. Debating from ignorance is... ignorant.

PS I think this proposed solution, like most geo-engineering quick fixes, is f-ing nuts. For starters, it doesn't exactly have an 'Undo' button.

PPS Let's forget about climate change. How does changing the pH of the ocean by half a point grab you? We're doing that, too (the excess CO2 is going into the oceans), and we don't really know what the impact will be, b/c it'll reflect conditions the oceans haven't seen in a loooong time (and I'm not talking 1000 years. If memory serves, it's been several hundred thousand to millions of years. We do know that calcifying species will likely not be so happy, which some might argue is a problem. But hey, we couldn't possibly harm the planet, could we?

Observation we cannot explain yet does not mean we don't have a good idea of what's going on:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20050428/ From the Article:
Any debate or discussion about climate change starts from the basic fact that Earth's temperature depends on the balance between how much solar energy the Earth absorbs and how much it radiates back into space.
...
Not only is Earth absorbing about 0.85 Watts of energy per square meter more than it is radiating back to space, but a sizable chunk of that excess energy is "hiding" in Earth's oceans, its full effect on the climate system still unrealized.

Now you explain to me how a change between the energy absorbed and emitted from earth does not mean global warming.

2.Life forms are surprisingly adaptive. You act as if plants are completely helpless in the face of a minor 2% change. I'm not saying there wouldn't be some long-term consequences (more to do with specific species thriving/suffering as opposed to planet-wide climate change) , but a permanent, perfectly linear/proportional drop in oxygen output is unrealistic.

True. While my comment here is anecdotal, this can goes both way, a experiment that was done on an algea shown that while first generation of algea thrived in a more rich CO2 environment, after 30 or so, they start slowing down their growth rate, slowing it lower than before the Increase in Co2. Moral: Nature will adapt, but we can't predict how, so I would not bet on a better outcome than what it is right now.

Increased Carbon Dioxide Levels Decrease Algae Growth

Now Climate Change is a lot more accurate than global warming, because what's happening right now is that the climate pattern on earth are changing. That may mean a lot colder or a lot hotter, a lot rainier, or a lot more chaotic than it is right now where you are living.

The sad thing is that people working on climate, environment will tell you, is that we need to take drastics actions because what's in cause is not only Climate Change, but the drastic drop in biodiversity the planet is undergoing. We are currently literrally killing the planet (sorry it does not explodes like in movies, it dies slowly on a decades or century basis). According to biologists (People who would far better like to study nature than document it's decay), we are currently experiencing a global species extinction at a similar scale that the one who killed the dinosaur. (You can sleep, the cow, from which we make hamburger will not disappear any time soon).

Welcome to the worst case scenario. As a friend of mine who is working on water and ice satelite tele-detection says: Do not buy anything that is near water. (For the record, I'm not kidding here)

Observation we cannot explain yet does not mean we don't have a good idea of what's going on:

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20050428/ From the Article:
Any debate or discussion about climate change starts from the basic fact that Earth's temperature depends on the balance between how much solar energy the Earth absorbs and how much it radiates back into space.
...
Not only is Earth absorbing about 0.85 Watts of energy per square meter more than it is radiating back to space, but a sizable chunk of that excess energy is "hiding" in Earth's oceans, its full effect on the climate system still unrealized.

Now you explain to me how a change between the energy absorbed and emitted from earth does not mean global warming.

2.Life forms are surprisingly adaptive. You act as if plants are completely helpless in the face of a minor 2% change. I'm not saying there wouldn't be some long-term consequences (more to do with specific species thriving/suffering as opposed to planet-wide climate change) , but a permanent, perfectly linear/proportional drop in oxygen output is unrealistic.

True. While my comment here is anecdotal, this can goes both way, a experiment that was done on an algea shown that while first generation of algea thrived in a more rich CO2 environment, after 30 or so, they start slowing down their growth rate, slowing it lower than before the Increase in Co2. Moral: Nature will adapt, but we can't predict how, so I would not bet on a better outcome than what it is right now.

Increased Carbon Dioxide Levels Decrease Algae Growth

Now Climate Change is a lot more accurate than global warming, because what's happening right now is that the climate pattern on earth are changing. That may mean a lot colder or a lot hotter, a lot rainier, or a lot more chaotic than it is right now where you are living.

The sad thing is that people working on climate, environment will tell you, is that we need to take drastics actions because what's in cause is not only Climate Change, but the drastic drop in biodiversity the planet is undergoing. We are currently literrally killing the planet (sorry it does not explodes like in movies, it dies slowly on a decades or century basis). According to biologists (People who would far better like to study nature than document it's decay), we are currently experiencing a global species extinction at a similar scale that the one who killed the dinosaur. (You can sleep, the cow, from which we make hamburger will not disappear any time soon).

Welcome to the worst case scenario. As a friend of mine who is working on water and ice satelite tele-detection says: Do not buy anything that is near water. (For the record, I'm not kidding here)

Yeah uh the major flaw in your argument is that the technology didn't exist when we where developing. The technology now exist for them to NOT PRODUCE those levels and maintain current productivity levels. Them meeting our same standards will not harm them. Also mentioned is this seems to only deal with co2 what about the sulphides they are spitting into the air like mad from burning Coal. (think London late 1800's)
warning link is to download a pdf

http://fire.biol.wwu.edu/trent/alles/AirPollution. pdf

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=19757

The problem is that all evidence points to the magnetic poles shifting, flipping, and changing in other ways over the course of the Earth's history. Every year the poles move by up to 40km, moving between continents within our own lifetimes. Here's an interesting article from NASA to explain the historical shifting/changing of the magnetic fields ... to me, this would invalidate the 'Snowball Earth' theory to some degree.

I don't think you read what I posted. 1996 was the hottest year in the 20th century for the entire earth (the 1930's weren't even close). That the arctic had a warmer year than this does not change that fact.

I don't know much more about polar bears than I do about the dust bowl. However, in doing a little background reading, I researched Polyakov. It seems figure 2 from Polyakov disagrees with the one you posted. So, it seems that someone is misrepresenting Polyakov. So, I went looking around TCS and found the article from which the plot came. If you want more from Polyakov (without the TCS filter telling you what to believe), here's an article he actually wrote: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~igor/research/am plif/amplif_jul02_2.pdf

That's the funny thing about those denying global warming. If you actually read the few scientific articles they say support their position, you usually find out that those articles do NOT support their position.

The Antarctic? Nope. Canada's eastern Arctic Archipelago? Nope. The Western Arctic? Nope. (See previous link) Greenland? Nope.

In case you haven't heard, dead zones (without oxygen) in the oceans are increasing rapidly.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4624359/
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/53803.html
http://disc.gsfc.nasa.gov/oceancolor/scifocus/ocea nColor/dead_zones.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_zone_(ecology)
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/1501AP_Dead _Zone.html
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/oct2006/2006-10-19 -03.asp
http://www.climateark.org/shared/reader/welcome.as px?linkid=59371
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2006/10/20/deadzone_ pla.html?category=earth&guid=20061020143030

I'm sure NASA will have worked out a shuttle-to-shuttle transfer technique utilizing the same mating adapters used to dock with the ISS. There will need to be some "bridge" component, as the airlock/docking adapters used to dock with the ISS don't clear the payload bay. Take a look at this photo: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle /sts-115/html/s115e05689.html The shuttle's docking adpater extends only to just under the crew cabin. The rest of that structure is the ISS.

I'll sure be happy when/if OWL eventually materializes (currently it's still more a concept than 'real'), as it would undeniably be a revolutionary telescope.

However, I don't really see Hubble service mission and OWL as direct competitors:

- OWL is at least a decade away in the future even without any delays, whereas Hubble service mission (if it happens) is about a more immediate problem that needs to be addressed in a couple of years, unless 'we' accept a gap of several years in existence of large space-based telescopes.

- Space-based and ground-based telescopes are still different beasts; it's not possible to currently haul truly gigantic telescopes to space, but space does provide its own benefits, such as no unwanted loss of many bands of electromagnetic spectrum; any ground-based telescope will have a hard time matching the infrared and UV observation performance of space-based telescopes, even if the difference in aperture is huge. Space-based telescopes also do not have to struggle with being blinded roughly half of the time due to daylight, which somewhat lessens the impact of smaller diameter.

- I'd assume that they're not completing directly for the same money, as OWL is an European project.

I have a recollection of adaptive optics also having issues with correcting large fields of view; if that's true, earth-based telescopes would excel mostly on small targets. However, this bit might be worth taking with a grain of doubt, as I might have just misunderstood something myself.

So, my opinion is that having both kind of telescopes would be nice; huge earth-bound telescopes for visible light/high resolving power and smaller space telescopes for peeking into other wavelengths. I'd really like to see something like Darwin or TPF as well, though...

You'd be amazed at where life can exist. Coincidentally, just a week ago they found bacteria living 2.8km down in a mine, that also fueled speculation of 'life on Mars'.

Some really cool critters we've known about for a while exist in the Deep Sea ocean vents, and subsist off the chemicals coming through the cracks in the Earth's crust. Another one people didn't hear too much about were bacteria that lived on top of the Surveyor 3 craft that went to the moon and back with the Apollo 11 crew, and basically survived for 3 years in space on nothing. (I remember this stuff because I wrote a paper on the feasibility of life on a planet without a Sun.)

This is from the http://www.jwst.nasa.gov/:
"JWST's instruments will be designed to work primarily in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum, with some capability in the visible range."

Actually, according to the NASA press release (http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2006/oct/HQ_06343 _HST_announcement.html), it is "tentatively targeted for launch during the spring to fall of 2008" and be able to continue to operate until about 2013.

"With USA abandoning the Hubble and ISS, theres not much to be done in space."

What are you talking about? What about the James Webb Telescope. We ought to be able to see the start of the universe with that sucker.

for reference:

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap000709.html

the Charismatic Megafauna problem would affect NASA?

Since Hubble's replacement is already under construction, and since ground based scopes like Keck exceed Hubble's capabilities, what is the benefit of dropping hundreds of millions of dollars repairing it?

You, sir, have more faith in NASA's bureaucracy than I do. Having had to battle their system and watched one bone-headed decision after another, I salute your optimism but fear that it is misplaced.

There is a new telescope in the works, but it's not due to launch until 2013. (This is the James Webb Space Telescope.) It does not duplicate what HST does since it will primarily be an infrared telescope.