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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope Is Back In Business
Matt_dk writes "Just a couple of days after the orbiting observatory was brought back online, Hubble aimed its prime working camera, the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2), at a particularly intriguing target, a pair of gravitationally interacting galaxies called Arp 147. The image demonstrated that the camera is working exactly as it was before going offline, thereby scoring a 'perfect 10 both for performance and beauty.' (Meanwhile, the slowly declining Mars Phoenix Lander has now entered safe mode, according to reader CraftyJack.)
The Mars Lander entered safe mode? Why do I have bad shivers all of a sudden? Must be my conditioned response from Windows.
How many boards would the Mongols hoard if the Mongol hordes got bored?
It's the Mars Lander (Phoenix), not the Mars Rover, that is going into standby.
Nothing else breaks before the rescheduled repair mission. With equipment this old if things keep breaking the mission could keep getting rescheduled over and over. [fingers crossed]
bad news: gnaa hacked it to only show goatse
The photos in the article are still pretty unfocused. How much did they really fix?
They're not shutting down the Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, correct? They're talking about shutting down the Lander, Phoenix. The Rovers are still going strong.
This is not a story, it's a news fact. The person who tags everything 'story' should at least know what a story is. So here we go (from OSX's Dictionary):
STORY 1
noun ( pl. -ries)
1 an account of imaginary or real people and events told for entertainment : an adventure story | I'm going to tell you a story.
- a plot or story line : the novel has a good story.
- a report of an item of news in a newspaper, magazine, or news broadcast : stories in the local papers.
- a piece of gossip; a rumor : there have been lots of stories going around, as you can imagine.
- informal a false statement or explanation; a lie : Ellie never told stories --she had always believed in the truth.
2 an account of past events in someone's life or in the evolution of something : the story of modern farming | the film is based on a true story.
- a particular person's representation of the facts of a matter, esp. as given in self-defense : during police interviews, Harper changed his story.
- [in sing. ] a situation viewed in terms of the information known about it or its similarity to another : having such information is useful, but it is not the whole story | many children with leukemia now survive--twenty years ago it was a very different story.
PHRASES
but that's another story informal used after raising a matter to indicate that one does not want to expand on it for now.
end of story informal used to emphasize that there is nothing to add on a matter just mentioned : Men don't cry in public. End of story.
it's a long story informal used to indicate that, for now, one does not want to talk about something that is too involved or painful.
it's (or that's) the story of one's life informal used to lament the fact that a particular misfortune has happened too often in one's experience : "It's the story of my life," my mother would say when she returned home from a sale empty-handed.
the same old story used to indicate that a particular bad situation is tediously familiar : are we not faced with the same old story of a badly managed project?
the story goes it is said or rumored : the story goes that he's fallen out with his friends.
to make (or Brit. cut) a long story short used to end an account of events quickly : to make a long story short, I married Stephen.
ORIGIN Middle English (denoting a historical account or representation): shortening of Anglo-Norman French estorie, from Latin historia (see history ).
story 2
noun
a part of a building comprising all the rooms that are on the same level : [in combination ] a three-story building.
DERIVATIVES
storied |ˈstɔrid| ( Brit. also storeyed) adjective : [in combination ] four-storied houses.
ORIGIN late Middle English : shortening of Latin historia 'history, story,' a special use in Anglo-Latin, perhaps originally denoting a tier of painted windows or sculptures on the front of a building (representing a historical subject).
Story
Story, Joseph (1779-1845), U.S. Supreme Court associate justice 1811-45. Appointed to the Court by President Madison, he was the youngest associate justice ever to serve. He established the supremacy of Supreme Court rulings.
FACT
noun
a thing that is indisputably the case : she lacks political experience--a fact that becomes clear when she appears in public | a body of fact.
- ( the fact that) used in discussing the significance of something that is the case : the real problem facing them is the fact that their funds are being cut.
- (usu. facts) a piece of information used as evidence or as part of a report or news article.
- chiefly Law the truth about events as opposed to interpretation : there was a question of fact as to whether they had received the letter.
PHRASES
before (or after) the fact before (or after) the committing of a crime : an accessory before the fact.
a fact of life something that must be accepted as true and unchanging, even if it is unpleasant : it is a fact of life that young girls write horrible things about people i
-- Cheers!
I knew those NASA guys were sandbagging.
Claiming to be carrying out "experiments" with "hypotheses," ha!
Hubble had lens implants.
The lander may be shutting down, but its work remembering that its done its job and exceeded 2.5 times its planned life span.
If everything I designed lasted 2.5 times its product life I would be happy.
You are too stupid to post Science stories.
And now back to our regularly scheduled program "Diverting Funding from New Space Telescope Technology"
I am your host, Marlin Perkins, and this week, we are sending Jim into space to repair the HST instead of focusing our funding on newer telescope technology.
I understand that the James Webb telescope thingy is not a visible light 'scope. But, do you wonder what kind of HST replacement we could have had already if we had not spent so much time and money on repairs?
Bearded Dragon
I hope they picked "with networking".
Wow, I didn't know it had a F8 key.
I guess now we can only get images in 640x480 with 256 colors...
Well, at least they chose "Safe Mode with Networking" and now will be able to look at NTBTLOG.TXT from a distance. Of course, given that it takes up to 40 minutes for round-trip communications to happen, they had to change the default setting from 30 seconds to 2400+ seconds, otherwise the lander's would have died before loading the power monitoring service--resulting in an infinite loop.
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
One galaxy going _through_ another ?
Mind boggling !
Absolute statements are never true
The primary mission was planned to take 92 days, and we are currently on day 158 and counting, a factor of about 1.76 so far. Furthermore that 92 days was just the tentative science schedule, not the designed lifespan. The lander was designed to last until winter hit.
Cue the Electric Universe evangelists in 3 ... 2 ... /. was full of them six months ago. I wonder where they all went?
Seriously,
Media that can be recorded and distributed can be recorded and distributed.
-kfg
Great to have you back!
The most interesting thing by far for the next polar (or near-polar) Mars lander to do would be to watch the winter ice caps develop around it.
After all, every single Mars mission mentions the possibility of life and water in the history of Mars, so that does seem to be important to us. Yet, there are millions of tons of water ice at the Martian poles, and given the amazing adaptability of life to extreme conditions on Earth, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility for life (of some sort) to exist at the poles of Mars despite the absence of water in liquid phase.
It's worth noting that liquid water isn't needed *permanently* for life to survive, but only occasionally for certain processes to proceed. There's not much water in space after all, yet some fairly high-level organisms manage to survive the hard vacuum for extended periods of time. Life seems to be amazingly resilient when needed.
But a polar Mars mission designed to survive and operate throughout the winter would need atomic power, and that's the big problem. Are we likely to see public anti-nuclear sentiment loosen up a little anytime in the next 20 years, to allow a series of such probes to be built and launched?
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
And they took the 1st photo from the "repaired" Hubble and it's an ARP galaxy???
BWAHAHAHAHA!
Uh, actually his name is Halton Arp http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halton_Arp