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In fact Werner von Braun took some interest in the Indian space programme, in the 60s.

India's first satellite was launched 30 years ago, called Aryabhata-I named after the 6th century Indian mathematician, Aryabhata.

Also, the launching station at Thumba is right on the Magnetic Equator. A story covering this can be seen here. Also,

A map of the world's space centers is available.

parent is insightful. the linked article provides little information. all that i could find is an article mentioning radishes, green onions, and lettuce as possible candidate species.

A-Day

Interesting theory. But I have a hard time correlating it with the explanation provided by NASA.

already state of the art recycling system see for example here.

Not exactly a lander, but there's the Galileo atmospheric probe which parachuted into Jupiter in late 1995.

While a successful mission, it (slightly disappointingly) didn't have any kind of camera on it . Although any pictures would almost certainly have been devoid of contrast or detail and would have overwhelmed the probe's limited communications capacity, they might have given the imagination a bit more to latch on to than the abstract instrumentation data that was returned. Probably why few people seem to have heard of this intriguing little side-mission...

Fortunately, the Huygens probe has some decent cameras. Judging by the demonstrations shown on BBC2's Horizon last night, expect full panoramic views of the atmosphere and surface of Titan, for assembling into 3D flyovers. Hooray!

Actually, a large, camera-laden spacecraft did enter the atmosphere of Jupiter more recently, but I don't think it returned too much data. It was the deliberate destruction of the main Galileo orbiter itself. ;-)

Not exactly a lander, but there's the Galileo atmospheric probe which parachuted into Jupiter in late 1995.

While a successful mission, it (slightly disappointingly) didn't have any kind of camera on it . Although any pictures would almost certainly have been devoid of contrast or detail and would have overwhelmed the probe's limited communications capacity, they might have given the imagination a bit more to latch on to than the abstract instrumentation data that was returned. Probably why few people seem to have heard of this intriguing little side-mission...

Fortunately, the Huygens probe has some decent cameras. Judging by the demonstrations shown on BBC2's Horizon last night, expect full panoramic views of the atmosphere and surface of Titan, for assembling into 3D flyovers. Hooray!

Actually, a large, camera-laden spacecraft did enter the atmosphere of Jupiter more recently, but I don't think it returned too much data. It was the deliberate destruction of the main Galileo orbiter itself. ;-)

Isn't this fabric excactly what Arthur C. Clarke described as the building blocks for his space elevator in "The Fountains of Paradise"?
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0446 677949/104-1661537-6837554?v=glance

He described long wires of single atom-wide carbon fibers stretching into space at geostationarily stable points. Which were used as the framework for elevators that brought people and cargo to space a lot cheaper than by rockets. It looks like NASA likes the idea:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast07sep_1 .htm

Higher res pics can be found here

now correct me if im wrong (too lazy to google):

taking the moon, venus and mars, this would be (only) the 4th extraterrestrial body we land a probe on. if huygens succeeds.

aah. now get me as stunning results as the mars rovers did. and launch the JIMO.

maybe were really "sending probes out here since the 70s and then suddenly everything goes whacko" . well. except the monolith. .)

now correct me if im wrong (too lazy to google):

taking the moon, venus and mars, this would be (only) the 4th extraterrestrial body we land a probe on. if huygens succeeds.

aah. now get me as stunning results as the mars rovers did. and launch the JIMO.

maybe were really "sending probes out here since the 70s and then suddenly everything goes whacko" . well. except the monolith. .)

You mean http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm.

Quite an impressive animation. I want one on a a globe. :)

Because Cassini cost $4 billion.. :-)

Good question - in fact there are only 6 replys so far, so I guess people here arent that excited. Also I do sometimes wonder about these big projects - wouldnt we get better performance long-term from a larger number of smaller probes? these can be turned around in a shorter space of time, and hence would have more up-to-date sensors. For example, the CCD on the Cassini camera is only 1 megapixel! (See below)

I have heard it suggested that most of the useful function of the JIMO $10 billion orbiter could be done with a simpler $1 billion direct-to-europa mission.. And look at New Horizons, with a mission cost less $1 billion, or SMART-1 less than $100 million..

From http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/instruments- cassini-iss.cfm ISS includes two cameras; a Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and a Narrow Angle Camera (NAC). Each uses a sensitive charge-coupled device (CCD) as its detector. Each CCD consists of a 1,024 square array of pixels, 12 microns on a side. The camera's system allows for many data collection modes, including on-chip data compression. Both cameras are fitted with spectral filters that rotate on a wheel -- to view different bands within the electromagnetic spectrum ranging from 0.2 microns to 1.1 microns.

Congratulations on buying a supercomputer for your third rate school with our money. The smart people who made it in California and sold it to you must be very happy. And thanks for hosting a NASA test site too dirty for any state of smart people to have in their backyard (at least 200 miles from yours), though it's a good demonstration of socialism working to drag smart people from out of state to prop up a failed society. Offering them the state's 70 miles of beachfront probably helped them ignore the swamp of ignorance and mud to the north.

Since I embrace the smart Mississipians who can cut it here in New York City (and elsewhere that I've met your refugees), I'm hardly the bigot that you are. Unless a prejudice for smart people as "smart" is bad. Of course, I don't expect you to understand words like "bigot", when you point at state schools which admit 13% of their students as black in a state with 36% black people: "in 1992 it was necessary for the U.S. Supreme Court to order the state college system to end its tradition of segregation". Thanks for the chance to quickly research the facts behind the obvious display of bigotry and idiocy that is synonymous with "Mississippi" after all your hard work. Please send back some of our tax money - I promise New York will spend it on sending you more of that good TV that you love so much.

Thanks for taking the time to remove any doubt whatsoever that you are, in fact, not only a bigot, but a complete idiot.

These satellites are not "simple" and some failures should be expected... see: NASA

atmosphere: although it is very thin by that point there is probably still enough to cause drag, even if we are talking decimals
- Earth gravity: the Earth still has a gravitational effect even at that distance, so taking into account the pull down would reduce the forward vector of the satellites
- Moon or Sol gravity: pretty much anything large enough has a gravity that will effect objects close by.

lmao. There's a difference between some dinky 80 kg 2' x 2' x 2' cube designed to be launched into SSO at 668km and a ~9000 kg beast designed to propel itself out of HEO and into an orbit around the icy moons of Jupiter to study their formation and composition with a vast instrument suite.

I'm not knocking their efforts, and I admire the work they have done; but this team of students has only designed a small, light satellite that performs a couple of on-board experiments and relays the information back to Earth. There is practically 0 innovation in this project because everything they use is COTS technology. The only innovative part will be the data collected from the experiment, but even the experiment uses COTS technology.

I'm as ticked off about the crap that Lockheed (and others) have failed on, but they're nowhere near being replaced in the next decade.

lmao. There's a difference between some dinky 80 kg 2' x 2' x 2' cube designed to be launched into SSO at 668km and a ~9000 kg beast designed to propel itself out of HEO and into an orbit around the icy moons of Jupiter to study their formation and composition with a vast instrument suite.

I'm not knocking their efforts, and I admire the work they have done; but this team of students has only designed a small, light satellite that performs a couple of on-board experiments and relays the information back to Earth. There is practically 0 innovation in this project because everything they use is COTS technology. The only innovative part will be the data collected from the experiment, but even the experiment uses COTS technology.

I'm as ticked off about the crap that Lockheed (and others) have failed on, but they're nowhere near being replaced in the next decade.

I didn't see any peer reviewed publications by Art Robinson; where are they?

And, yes, solar variation has an influence on temperatures, and climatologists are aware of it. See Solar variation accounts for less than half of global warming in 20th Century, UA geoscientist finds, for example. And here.

I so hear that.

When I started a job several years ago, I was completely shocked that the previous admin decided we needed to keep telnet open to the outside world in the event we had an engineer somewhere off-site who didn't have access to an SSH client. I immediately took down the telnet access, installed a firewall (they didn't have one!), and told everyone they had to use SSH to get in.

Well, that made a few of the elders pretty angry, saying it made things too inconvenient for them. A few bitching-out sessions from them to my then boss, and he made me -- against all of my protests -- open telnet back up (I tried to at least make them use OPIE enabled telnet, but that didn't cut it with them.

Sure enough, we later got attacked through telnet. Luckily I had a lot of alarms pointing to unauthorized telnet access, so as soon as it happened, I locked it down. But you know who was to blame for that attack? The admin. Me. Somehow I didn't warn them enough, and short of quitting my job, there was nothing more I could've done. Luckily later I reported to someone who knew something about technology, and now everything's honkey-dorey in the security department. If an engineer demands something outrageous, I'm not fighting it alone now.

In the case of allowing users to have unfettered access to their workstations, the immediate threat I can think of is possible disgruntled employee activity, such as installing network scanners (won't do a whole lot on our net anyway), key loggers (for when an admin such as myself needs access to their system directly), or any number of other problematic programs.

I can't tell you how many times I had to deal with a user installing something on an unrestricted system (yes, there was a time I did this) that inevitably wasted more of both of our time while I cleaned up all the crap off their system and hunted down the problem.

I dunno, maybe companies need to have some sort of exam for employees to take to prove they know what the hell they're doing on a Windows box before being granted access to install their own programs on a system.

In the end, the parent post is still correct here. If something happens on your workstation that affects others, such as a virus or rogue program, the admin is full-out to blame no matter who installed the program or what they did to escape detection.

Sorry for my disjointed rant. Haven't had my coffee yet but for some reason felt the need to add my 2 bits.

Imigod, I slashdotted SOHO but who cares, it looks like no one is reading this story.

When it has lost all the ugly spots, why is the sun said to be hitting minimum!?! The girl next to our door with all those pimples'd say it should be called maximum.

Whatever might it be called, I hope the temperatures get down a little so I can get outside in the day (that being awake in the day is an extremely difficult thing is a different matter though)

If memory serves me right, the JWST won't work at visible wavelengths, though.

Yes, there are things that Hubble can do that no other satellites can do, but not for the reasons you listed.

Hubble is one of multiple telescopes in NASA's Great Observatories project.

There are currently three space-bound observatories for astronomy.
For instance, Spitzer meets the qualifications you gave, the difference being that it operates in the IR range, while Chandra looks at x-rays.

Hubble works in the visible range. But that's not to say that it's the only space-based visible spectrum satellite, as there's also SOHO, which points at the sun, and isn't used to point anywhere but the sun.

[I'm not an astronomer, but I work on the STEREO and VSO projects]

Yes, there are things that Hubble can do that no other satellites can do, but not for the reasons you listed.

Hubble is one of multiple telescopes in NASA's Great Observatories project.

There are currently three space-bound observatories for astronomy.
For instance, Spitzer meets the qualifications you gave, the difference being that it operates in the IR range, while Chandra looks at x-rays.

Hubble works in the visible range. But that's not to say that it's the only space-based visible spectrum satellite, as there's also SOHO, which points at the sun, and isn't used to point anywhere but the sun.

[I'm not an astronomer, but I work on the STEREO and VSO projects]

Yes, there are things that Hubble can do that no other satellites can do, but not for the reasons you listed.

Hubble is one of multiple telescopes in NASA's Great Observatories project.

There are currently three space-bound observatories for astronomy.
For instance, Spitzer meets the qualifications you gave, the difference being that it operates in the IR range, while Chandra looks at x-rays.

Hubble works in the visible range. But that's not to say that it's the only space-based visible spectrum satellite, as there's also SOHO, which points at the sun, and isn't used to point anywhere but the sun.

[I'm not an astronomer, but I work on the STEREO and VSO projects]

Yes, there are things that Hubble can do that no other satellites can do, but not for the reasons you listed.

Hubble is one of multiple telescopes in NASA's Great Observatories project.

There are currently three space-bound observatories for astronomy.
For instance, Spitzer meets the qualifications you gave, the difference being that it operates in the IR range, while Chandra looks at x-rays.

Hubble works in the visible range. But that's not to say that it's the only space-based visible spectrum satellite, as there's also SOHO, which points at the sun, and isn't used to point anywhere but the sun.

[I'm not an astronomer, but I work on the STEREO and VSO projects]

Yes, there are things that Hubble can do that no other satellites can do, but not for the reasons you listed.

Hubble is one of multiple telescopes in NASA's Great Observatories project.

There are currently three space-bound observatories for astronomy.
For instance, Spitzer meets the qualifications you gave, the difference being that it operates in the IR range, while Chandra looks at x-rays.

Hubble works in the visible range. But that's not to say that it's the only space-based visible spectrum satellite, as there's also SOHO, which points at the sun, and isn't used to point anywhere but the sun.

[I'm not an astronomer, but I work on the STEREO and VSO projects]

The main reason would that the Chinese parachute worked while the Genesis failed.

The other reason would be a weight budget -- the Genesis mission travelled much further, so the energy (and cost) to propel any additional weight would be much more than for the Chinese mission. Thus, it probably wasn't overbuilt.

The third reason is the mission. The Genesis mission had to open up to expose its collectors, while the chinese mission is a bit unknown. If it was a zero gravity research, its experiments probably didn't need exposure to space. If it produced a massive amount of data that couldn't be transmitted back, the data storage is usually easy to separate from the instruments (including film & camera). Anyone know what it was supposed to do?

Everything you wanted to know about the space shuttle, but were afraid to ask.

The link works, slashcode just puts a space in long strings with out spaces(like URLS). More Moons Around Earth? It's Not So Loony

There are newer/better articals, but I'm to lazy to keep looking, heck even /. has covered them multiple times in the last 5 years.1, 2,.

Also about the size thing, while I was wrong in the portion, the moon does effect us a lot. This link will help put things in perspective. Best I could find.(I am working after all, and don't have much time to put into my postings or reading of websites) Big Planets, Little Planets, Big Moons, Little Moons!

Look on the bright side. The craft was not a complete loss, and it was the first probe to successfully test the Interplanetary Superhighway. (Article with pictures) Now that we know the IPSHwy works, we have the capability to launch cargo ANYWHERE in the solar system.

The primary limitation is the maximum weight we can get to the Earth/Moon Lagrange points. Once at the L-points, the cargo pretty much travels one gravity slingshot to the next with nearly no fuel expenditure. This could be a massive boon for sending Interplanetary mission cargo, especially when staging manned missions!

The only down side is that the IPSHwy is simply too slow for manned travel. Not too bad of a tradeoff, however, when you consider the amount of mass that can be more easily staged at Mars in advance! It's certainly reasonable that we could have a complete microsat network at Mars before a human ever sets foot there. Services that could be provided include:

- Mars GPS system
- Deep Space Network Uplink
- Satellite Radio Communicators for landing teams
- Detailed mapping and emergency surveillance of problem areas

In short, we could have a complete technological infrastructure on Mars before we risk anyone's life going there. It wouldn't have to be like the moon mission. We could go to stay.

Remember, when Apollo was created, they had no idea how they were going to pull it off. If one has the time, look through all of the design concepts for a moon flight that Nasa didn't use. A good starting point is the Apollo Spacecraft - A Chronology. They toyed with different numbers of stages. The idea of having a seperate lunar lander and command module that would re-dock in orbit was devised and executed mid-project. They basically designed whole new architectures for computing.

Whereas the Shuttle has a design parameters a few pages long, Apollo had one directive: Land a man safely on the moon and return him safely to the Earth.

Mach numbers aren't static, as they vary with air pressure. Orbital re-entry velocities are around 25,000ft/s (7620m/s), or at least that's what was used with the Mercury and Gemini missions. (The same page lists the Apollo re-entry velocity as 36,000ft/s.) That's an enormous difference from what SSO encountered.

The page cannot be displayed There is a problem with the page you are trying to reach and it cannot be displayed. Please try the following: * Click the Refresh button, or try again later; it does not normally take a long time for an application to restart. * Open the www.uwnews.org home page, and then look for links to the information you want. HTTP Error 500-12 Application Restarting Internet Information Services Technical Information (for support personnel) * Background: The request cannot be processed while the Web site is restarting. * More information: Microsoft Support

No, you got it about right. See the picture at the NASA page on the original grant to UWash...it looks just like a mini version of earth.s magnetospheric sheilding of the solar wind.

NASA has this page explaining the physics and why it granted the money to the UWash research team. And the NASA page responds...The UWASH page pointed to by the article is somewhere behind a cloud of smoke coming out of their poor slashdotted server. 350 comments later, I still cant raise it.

ftp://ftp.hq.nasa.gov/pub/nickname/

Perhaps someone can start a chain letter to help NASA get this funded?

This guy talks about 3000 RPM as a novel, high, shaft speed. Standard power generation turbines normally run at 3600 RPM, or sometimes 1800 RPM, to synch with the power grid. Modern microturbines run up to 96,000 RPM. (Yes, at last, Capstone Turbine isn't vaporware any more. You can actually buy a 60KW generator from them. This is an option worth considering if you need backup power for your data center.) Only 24% efficient, though. General Electric's most efficient gas turbines have reached 60%. (Big turbines are more efficient than little ones.)

Turbine technology is up against materials limits. Vast amounts of effort (many billions of dollars) have been put into finding better materials for turbine blades, because this limits aircraft performance. Current blades are single crystals of metal, often with a ceramic coating. Pure ceramic blades have been made, but have tensile strength and brittleness problems. The turbine this guy is talking about requires materials way beyond anything that exists today.

If it's thermodynamically possible to build a big machine of the type this guy is talking about, it should possible to build a little one right now.

The Huygens probe instruments are primarily designed for measurements during the descent through the atmosphere, along with some measurements at the time of landing and immediately after. The probe batteries are sized for 153 minutes of operation, so there would be no point in listening after the batteries have drained.

Ok.. Sorry to do it, BUT... "Well, can you at least make it taste like chicken? Otherwise, I'm gonna shrivel up like a super model"

• Before the Huygens probe separates from Cassini, a timer is set which will awaken it prior to entry into Titan's atmosphere. This timer triple-redundant.
  
• The probe separates from Cassini, and shuts down all systems (except for the timer). It coasts for 21 days before reaching Titan.
  
• Five days after separation, Cassini (not Huygens, it's asleep, remember?) will perform a deflection maneuver to position itself such that it can receive data from Huygens via radio (which will be relayed to Earth).
  
• A few hours before entering the atmosphere, Huygens will be awakened by its timer.
  
• At the time that Huygens starts to enter the atmosphere, Cassini will start to listen for signals from the probe. It will continue to listen until 30 minutes after the landing of Huygens.
  
• When Huygens has decelerated to 1440 km/h, a mortar will deploy the "pilot" parachute, which in turn will remove the aft cover and deploy the main parachute.
  
• After the 8.3 meter parachute is deployed, the front shield is released and falls away.
  
• After a delay of 30 seconds (to prevent instrument contamination from the shield), inlet ports are opened and atmospheric instruments are activated. At this time, the Atmospheric Structure Instrument boom is also deployed.
  
• 2 minutes later, the Imager/Spectral Radiometer cover is ejected.
  
• 15 minutes after the main parachute has been deployed, it is ejected and in its place the descent parachute (3 meters) is deployed.
  
• From this point on, the descent will last between 2 and 2.5 hours.
  

See wednesday's APOD.

Weightlessness would have psychological and physiological effects on humans: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-4026/ noord28.html I wonder how these effects can be incorporated in the results of this experiment.

There was an Astronomy Picture of the Day showing a satellite view of contrails over Georgia.

Wow, didn't realize that the off-the-top-of-my-head figures and over-simplified explanation would generate so much traffic. To further explain some points:

Yes, magnetic confinement is very lossy and low-density. Except in the case of antimatter, its probably not worth the trouble. Though a prior poster had an interesting idea about magnetic confinement in space - kinda like an M2P2 (mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion - google it for more info) thing.

As for my choice of numbers - with a bit of work, one can come up with fuels that are as high in energy density if not higher. My original numbers were pulled from: Space Propulsion Analysis and Design by R. Humble, et al; and Fusion Research by Dolan. Both are excellent references.

For more interesting information along the same lines, check: Advanced Energetics for Aeronautical Applications by D. Alexander. It's a NASA paper (NASA/CR-2003-212169) and should be available from the Langley Technical Reports Server.

b) You mean to say that there was a mini ice-age as recently as the mid-1700s. Does this mean that we are still in one? I'd say we listen to the climatologists on this one, who say no.

Glaciers on the Alps and in Africa are retreating.

Your data is just wrong for b, d and e

Executive summary:

Ozone in upper atmosphere: good (absorbs UV rays).
Ozone near the ground: bad (it's poisonous).

See here for more info.

I have always had a hard time understanding how anyone can dismess global warming, considering that 95%

Repeat after me: the majority is always right. A minority of one is always insane. This has been so since the party invented the word revolution, shortly before it invented the plane. Everyone agrees to be sane, that must make you insane.

Show me the fucking data, meanwhile I'll stick to nasa satellite meassurements:
http://www.ghcc.msfc.nasa.gov/MSU/hl_temp_glbave.h tml