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Nope, it's usually multi-layered and dim and wet and dampness poses one of the biggest problems for gear, generally. The thickness of the cover not only makes solar-power really impossible, but makes getting a GIS signal generally impossible, too. If someone makes it possible, a lot of us would be ecstatic. NASA gives a hand and remote sensing helps, but under a canopy as dense as rainforest can be is about as remote as you can get these days, where satellite at least makes it possible to establish contact with something in the middle of deserts and oceans.

• Info (src: Athena)
• Tech Briefing (PDF 52 KB)
• Info (src: Planetary Society)
• Info (src: NASA)
• Info (src: Caves of Mars).
• Filter Specs (showing approximate color swatches in browser).

On the #maestro channel on freenode, a bunch of people got talking about this. Although no one there is an expert on the cameras, the conclusion reached was that it was probably an error in the camera. If you look at the original the object is completely white. When you have any object that comes up as completly white you have to take into account problems with the pixels bleeding. Also, the colour image is a combonation of several images (one for each filter) which aren't taken at exactly the same time, so the object may of moved (if it were a peice of airbag, or other stray material that came off during the pyrotechnics that released the cables it might of blown around in the wind). When combining those pictures you would get odd looking object that doesn't convey what it actually looks like.

You can see all the original pictures of the strange object here.

On the #maestro channel on freenode, a bunch of people got talking about this. Although no one there is an expert on the cameras, the conclusion reached was that it was probably an error in the camera. If you look at the original the object is completely white. When you have any object that comes up as completly white you have to take into account problems with the pixels bleeding. Also, the colour image is a combonation of several images (one for each filter) which aren't taken at exactly the same time, so the object may of moved (if it were a peice of airbag, or other stray material that came off during the pyrotechnics that released the cables it might of blown around in the wind). When combining those pictures you would get odd looking object that doesn't convey what it actually looks like.

You can see all the original pictures of the strange object here.

Safety may be the main reason but it was always risky to do work in space. Perhaps we understand the risk better now and have rethought our risk:reward ratio. Comments on other points:

The Hubble wasn't state of the art when it was launched. Nothing launched is state of the art; by the time it is designed and built with space-hardened parts, it is already out of date, not to mention the actual delay involved in launching and on-orbit activation.

Hubble was flawed when it was launched. Luckily there was a servicing mission or it would have been a practically useless telescope, though today we have deconvolution software which goes a long way toward correcting this and other optical flaws, whether or not you know how it is flawed or camera is moving, etc.

While adaptive optics can compensate for the atmosphere in some ways it cannot compensate in all ways; there are limitations and more limitations, even of multi-conjugate AO. Telescopes in orbit or on the Moon will always have some advantages.

It looks like you took your image from the JPEG that NASA put up on the Web. Bad idea, of course. At first, I just wrote it off as an artifact, but it does exist in the original image (a 48MB TIFF file from the Mars gallery).

I have put up a crop of the original which you can feel free to stare at. Yes, it does appear to be some sort of round object with two large protrusions. It could easily be a rock of volcanic origin, but my bet is on its being some piece of the lander itself.

It looks like you took your image from the JPEG that NASA put up on the Web. Bad idea, of course. At first, I just wrote it off as an artifact, but it does exist in the original image (a 48MB TIFF file from the Mars gallery).

I have put up a crop of the original which you can feel free to stare at. Yes, it does appear to be some sort of round object with two large protrusions. It could easily be a rock of volcanic origin, but my bet is on its being some piece of the lander itself.

And it was on NASA's site almost two weeks ago:
Revealing Mars' True Colors: Part One
Revealing Mars' True Colors: Part Two
Nothing to see here, take off the tinfoil hat.

And it was on NASA's site almost two weeks ago:
Revealing Mars' True Colors: Part One
Revealing Mars' True Colors: Part Two
Nothing to see here, take off the tinfoil hat.

Really? http://ngst.gsfc.nasa.gov/FAQ/FAQans.htm#anchor7 Sounds like a good scientific reason to me.

And just below the information you cite (http://ngst.gsfc.nasa.gov/FAQ/FAQans.htm#anchor8) :

When JWST is at the second Lagrange point (see previous question), it will be out of reach of the Space Shuttle and repairs cannot be made once it has been launched. This also means that no provisions have to be made to allow astronauts to make repairs.

There's your economic reason.

the decision to situate the JWST at L2 was made primarily on economic grounds

Really?

http://ngst.gsfc.nasa.gov/FAQ/FAQans.htm#anchor7

Sounds like a good scientific reason to me.

I've seen a few people suggest that not having the Hubble will be okay, because it's going to be replaced by the James Webb Space Telescope. There was a good discussion on slashdot about this before, however, that led me to this site that explains the Lagrange points.

The Lagrange points are so far away from the earth that there are no reusable space craft that can reach them. This will make it next to impossible to service the JWST should something malfunction or fail (like the Hubble did so notoriously).

I would guess (based on my experience with other NASA data archives) that the full scientific data are not being released until they've been calibrated, at which point they'll probably end up in the Planetary Data System It's also possible that the Principle Investigators (who are affiliated with Cornell, not NASA) have exclusive use of the data for some period of time. Scientists are often very reluctant to share data until they're happy with it. Whether this is good public policy (since the data was all paid for by the US public) or good science is open to debate, but it's certainly not a conspiracy.

In the case of the more dramatic images, Public Affairs is almost certainly embargoing the images so the press release will (in theory) have more impact. If you really want the data you can always try a Freedom of Information Act request.

I would guess (based on my experience with other NASA data archives) that the full scientific data are not being released until they've been calibrated, at which point they'll probably end up in the Planetary Data System It's also possible that the Principle Investigators (who are affiliated with Cornell, not NASA) have exclusive use of the data for some period of time. Scientists are often very reluctant to share data until they're happy with it. Whether this is good public policy (since the data was all paid for by the US public) or good science is open to debate, but it's certainly not a conspiracy.

In the case of the more dramatic images, Public Affairs is almost certainly embargoing the images so the press release will (in theory) have more impact. If you really want the data you can always try a Freedom of Information Act request.

Read this and this. These are from the NASA Rover site and they explain it all.

Read this and this. These are from the NASA Rover site and they explain it all.

They've taken several pictures of the lander platform in true color in order to calibrate the camera.

Much better images here: www.rense.com

I know Rense is a bit of a tin-foil hat site, but NASA have been strangely silent on this.

The original NASA picture is at: marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov [large file]

Even the mainstream press are (deliberately?) ignoring it.

I don't think it's debris from the lander.

Not just that, using a B/W camera allows them to use any filter they like.

They have at least 14 filters, taking 14 cameras would be impossible.

Info here.

Explain this without dark matter. Or perhaps the nature of the rotation of galaxies. They would fly apart! It is not as though dark matter is only explaining one sinlge phenomena. If this was so then the theory would not hold well. It however explains more then just one (e.g. the two mentioned above).

-Lauren

What if this is only a *very* good approximation for all normal purposes, and even for things as large as the solar system (in the same way that Newtonian mechanics is good enough for all earthly based stuff).

What if gravity doesn't quite work this way at galactic scales?

I'd like to sign one against this waste of money.

Not so. The "piers," or launch pads, are still in use by the Space Shuttle program. The LUT's are more like the ropes that held the ships to the piers. Let 'em go, I say.

Dark matter was postulated because galaxies spin at the wrong rate for the amount of observable matter they contain. That's not some obscure thing having to do with background radiation or age of the universe, it's a pretty concrete problem that can't be easily be explained away by reinterpreting measurements.

The existence of dark matter has also been inferred from other observations (see above link), but even if that observation doesn't hold up, the odd behavior of galaxies still remains.

Or better yet.

While Spirit's drilling of an igneous rock is kindof interesting, it's (IMHO) comparatively dull when contrasted with Opportunity's microscopic images of the sedimentary rock at the Meridiani location. The layers could have been formed by sedimentation at the bottom of a lake or by volcanic ash being succesively deposited by eruptions, we should know within a day or two when the APXS and Moessbauer spectrometer reveal the chemical makeup of the rocks.

While Spirit's drilling of an igneous rock is kindof interesting, it's (IMHO) comparatively dull when contrasted with Opportunity's microscopic images of the sedimentary rock at the Meridiani location. The layers could have been formed by sedimentation at the bottom of a lake or by volcanic ash being succesively deposited by eruptions, we should know within a day or two when the APXS and Moessbauer spectrometer reveal the chemical makeup of the rocks.

You know, when I search for "California's problems" I just get the usual prolifera of all the ways God hates you.

Sun's Java Desktop System seems to be doing quite well.

10,000 to the United India Insurance Company, 500,000 to 1,000,000 per year to the China Standard Software Co, and approval from the UK government for a 5 year purchase agreement.

Downloadable Java applets seem to be doing quite well on the internet, including for games, custom user interfaces, security applications, etc.

At the company I work at, one of our main design tools is a java application that you just copy from the server (essentially download) and run. The developers came from another company where they were doing the same thing.

NASA is using Java to control the Mars Rovers, and track satellites.

More and more tools built by Computer Science researchers are in Java, like this Bayesian Network tool, or are switching from other languages to Java, like this static program verification tool.

In short, I think you completely missed it with your answer.

To make large, economical and safe space hotels in orbit or on the moon, we would need a lot of asteroidal and/or lunar material to make structural materials, outfit the interiors (tables, chairs, etc.), build shielding from space radiation and micrometeorites, and large, thick windows for great views. Giant, flat, polished mirrors from asteroid nickel or lunar aluminum could be used to protect large windows from direct exposure to micrometeorites.

Agricultural areas would be needed to reduce expensive food imports, water, oxygen, a large solar power plant (or other energy source). As these are all of the same things that we will need for a permanent lunar base, the producers of space hotel components may be the creators of the first factories, homes and communities in space and on the moon.

And there will always be some people who will want to buy a one-way ticket! How would you feel about moving permanently to the moon? According to the Space Tourism Initiative, a survey completed by the National Aerospace Laboratory (NAL) in 1995, in North America (U.S. and Canada) of 1020 households concluded that overall, 60% of those surveyed were interested in traveling to space for a vacation.

45.6% indicate they would pay three month's salary for such a trip, 18.2% would pay six months salary, and 10.65% would pay a year's salary. Two-thirds of those wishing to visit space said they would do so several times.

nasa's take on what it would take to make "pathetic tourism" worthwhile... sigh. I wonder if the other great explorers had to listen to people like you.

is right here in PDF www.nasa.gov/pdf/55407main_24%20Exploration.pdf format.

...

NASA's job should be limited to flight hardware and support systems.

If NASA got rid of about half its organization, and insisted that the remaining half build stuff that flies, they might get somewhere.

If Stennis were sold off NASA would have serious problems testing it's flight hardware and support systems. The test stands at Stennis are capable of testing heavy flight hardware like the shuttle main engine and the main stage for the Delta IV rocket. (The test stand where the Delta IV engines are certified were once used to flight certify the Saturn V first stage). Developmental engine components are also tested at Stennis. This is important for any new spacecraft that come out of Bush's initiative. If it's built, it has to be tested, before it flies. That's where SSC comes in.

Disclaimer: I've worked at Stennis as a NASA Co-Op in propulsion testing. I'm speaking for myself, and no, I don't know everything about the organization and why most of the decisions debated here on /. are made. I'm just saying what I know. (If anyone's curious and would like to form their own opinion, Stennis's web site is here.)

Hubble's done some amazing stuff, but it didn't find Dark Energy - WMAP did.

OK, my bad. It's closer to 0.5 to 2 percent per month. Multiplied by many months to get to Mars, and you get the idea.

From the NASA website, "NASA's budget will increase by $1 billion over the next five years when compared with the President's 2004 plan. That is an increase of approximately five percent per year over the next three years, and approximately one percent for the following two years."

I don't see how the tax cuts are cutting the budget when NASA is saying that their budget will be increasing over the next 5 years with the President's plan.

I used to have to force myself to look at the big picture and realize what an amazing place I was in

To travel to our neighboring stars as practically as envisioned by science fiction, breakthroughs in science are required. One of these breakthroughs is to discover a self-contained means of propulsion that requires no propellant. To chart a path toward such a discovery, seven hypothetical space drives are presented to illustrate the specific unsolved challenges and associated research objectives toward this ambition. One research objective is to discover a means to asymmetrically interact with the electromagnetic fluctuations of the vacuum. Another is to develop a physics that describes inertia, gravity, or the properties of spacetime as a function of electromagnetics that leads to using electromagnetic technology for inducing propulsive forces. Another is to determine if negative mass exists or if its properties can be synthesized. An alternative approach that covers the possibility that negative mass might not exist is to develop a formalism of Mach's Principle or reformulate ether concepts to lay a foundation for addressing reaction forces and conservation of momentum with space drives.

breaks new ground in digital photography by combining metadata, like location via GPS, with the image.

Wait a minute. "Breaking new ground by... combining metadata with an image"????

Sigh. Astronomers have been doing this since at least 1981 with the FITS Format. See over here for the full story on this venerable and still very much in production format.

I sure hope M$ doesn't try something silly like a patent on this; it seems to me that FITS and the other formats used by the Medical and Geophysical Sciences would provide a wealth of prior art...

well, at least you can get the certificate without taking the tests ;)

Now I'm doing pure research and some teaching, in Boulder, CO. This turns out to be closer to my dream job -- more flexible hours and lots of self-directed variety to the tasks. It's certainly not for everyone -- I basically sit around staring at equations, or images, or image-processing software, most of the time -- but every once in a while I get to figure out something nobody's ever known before, and that keeps me going the rest of the year.

Of course, the problem with a self-directed job is that you're always with your boss... :-)

I and others disagree. Here's two:

Consider Paul Graham: Beating the Averages. Considering that he's the kind of guy that gets invited to MIT as a language wizard (along with Guy Steele, David Detlefs, Martin Rinard, Jonathan Rees, and David Moon), and considering that he has a net worth in the (hundreds of) millions, I'll go with his choice: abstraction rules.

Consider Erann Gat from JPL (the guys who get to send robots to Mars and build autonomously controlled space probes) disagrees and empirically proves it.

Diamond Walker emphatically endorses LISP - his story is very compelling.

The list goes on and on: Dan Friedman, Mitchell Wand, Shriram Krishnamurthi, Christian Quiennec ...

But, to paraphrase Graham, if you don't know these people I guess I don't have to worry about you.

Obviously, this would have been much easier in digital (firmware change)! But I think the elegance thing factors in. Don't you know these will make for fantastic antiques!

The Mars and Rolex "Perpetual Motion" watches are analog watches.

Most people here are discussing digital watches with analog faces. IANAWS, but on the inside is the same quartz crystal based timing system....

Also, not caring about the weight budget of the mission is doesn't strike me as a rational approach to solving the problem. As motivated as you are to have a long-lasting, productive mission, the idea that you are more motivated than the mission engineers themselves is, on the evidence, strikingly counter-intuitive.

That said, it's clear that the issue has been known since at least 1998, and that experiments have been proposed to study and solve the problem.

It's possible that the problem is much less trivial than you think, though, given that NASA is apparently considering atomic generators as a solution.

Unfortunately, I don't have time at the moment to track down any definitive links to the current missions' weight budgets, or any details on the hard choices the design teams had to make and the criteria they used to make those choices. However, it seems obvious even so that what looks like a trivial problem at first glance to you and me has actually turned out to be relatively intractable to the kind of quick fixes proposed here.

It's possible that future experimentation will yield an easy solution. Such a solution may even be in the works, but was not suitably proven in time to be included in the current missions.

If I find out any more details on why NASA is willing to put up with dust on their solar panels, I'll let you know.

To put it midly, your statement about "no science' indicates you are misinformed (I'd prefer a different word, but I'm feeling polite today). Perhaps you'd like to check the following link. You may find that the "science' they supposedly are not doing has a direct relation to the pipe dreams of [y]our glorious leader.

http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news/releases/2 004/04-012.html

Sorry, try again. You forgot the weight of the mountings, suspension, deployment units, etc. There's more to the solar panels than just the panelling itself. Weight adds up quickly when talking about structure support and reinforcement. (The entire rover weighs 174 Kg.) Motors to deploy the panels are no slouches either, although NASA is probably using a small motor similar to those on an RC car.

BTW, the Rover has a maximum power generating capability of 140 Watts. It takes two batteries to keep the rover running when there isn't enough sunlight. NASA doesn't say what kind of batteries they are (their "specs" on the rover are kind of useless), but external sources claim that they are Lithium Ion batteries with a weight of 7.15Kg a piece (8.77 Kg with the support struts). That same article claims that the rover needs a constant 100 Watts to operate.

Let's do some math shall we?

Design 1: We ditch the batteries all together, and use a 150 Watt RTG. We'll estimate it's weight is ~2Kg of plutonium, plus another 2 Kg of material for the rest of the device and the mountings. The net weight increase is (2 + 2) - (8.77 * 2) = -13.54 Kg.

Design 2: We use a 150 Watt RTG, but keep one battery for high draw situations. The net weight increase is (2 + 2) - 8.77 = -4.77 Kg.

One way or another, it's a win-win situation. Sorry, we're back to the "tree huggers" stopping RTG missions.

The ISS is, technically, international since two nations are doing most of it, but what if there were a dozen nations as deeply involved, or a hundred?

Actually, there are 16 Nations participating, so this qualifies for "a dozen", doesnt't it?

Besides that, you are right. The ISS is just a prototype. Talking about its qualities as research lab was just a way to show the investors (taxpayers) some justification for the expense. It was needed to quiet down all those "we have more pressing problems as to catapult stuff into space"-people.
Of course science is a goal, but to think those discoveries will earn back the money invested in a way directly measurable, is absurd.

In the long term there are 2 solutions for mankind:
1. Find a way to stop population growth and base our whole society on resources available in unlimited amounts. Live in equilibrium with our environment. As our economy does only work if it can grow steady (about 2% are ideal) this would be a fundamental change.
2. Do what we did for millenea now: Go out there and expand.

As #1 is not very likely to happen, the question is not whether we can afford to venture into space, but if we can afford not to.
If we do neither, we(as in humanity) will vanish inevitably.

The ISS is just a stepping stone, yes, but as training ground for space engineering, not space expeditions.

BZZT. 2.5 pounds of Plutonium per 75 watts of electricity. That's probably not that much heavier than the solar panels. The best part is that you'd need less battery with an RTG (just enough for large power draws) so you can save more weight there than your RTG costs you.

Whoever modded that +3Informative didn't do any research. I did.
Actually, per NASA: A conservative projection of an achievable thin-film solar cell blanket usable for space would be a 5% efficient thin-film cell fabricated on a 25 micron thick Kapton substrate. This yields a photovoltaic blanket specific power of 1.7 kW/kg. An optimistic projection might be a 15% thin-film cell on a 7 micron thick Kapton substrate, leading to a photovoltaic blanket specific power of 15 kW/kg. These numbers compare favorably to current state of the art spacecraft solar blankets.
Compare that to your alleged 70W/kg. Go BZZZT yourself.

You said: " The suits are actually nowhere near sterile. . . . taking enough of those chemicals to sterilize the suit everytime you go out could get both very heavy AND very expensive."

It is probably not that important to worry about not contaminating the Martian environment because it is believed that the unshielded UV radiation has created superoxides in the oxygen bearing Martian minerals. This would be lethal to any organisms, and this is the main reason it is believed there is no life on the surface of Mars. It could be argued that organisms could be picked up in the wind and carried far across the planet, but those organisms would be killed due to superoxides in the iron-heavy airborne Martian dust (its really too small to call sand). The main area where we would have to be careful is while digging, and then only in that particular local area. I would reckon to guess that a couple of hours in the Martian environment (being pelted with superoxide laden dust) would be as effective at killing terrestrial organisms as the sterilizing chemicals that could be brought onboard.

Make a FUCKING proper link you dipshit... Slashcode borks everything up.

Mod Up +5 SENSIBLE

Toward the end of the video called "Exploring the Martian Surface" it shows the little grinder being used.

But Quicktime only? What the hell's up with *that*? Jeez, NASA....