Tomorrow We May See Santa on Mars

The debate about what created the "canals" on Mars and whether it had polar caps like Earth's has gone on for a while now and no new evidence has been found even with the various missions conducted thus far. We're finally making some progress collecting data samples in Martian soil now over the past 10 years, and the latest mission with the Phoenix craft will hopefully move us closer to an answer.

The San Francisco Chronicle has a good chronology of the history of the Martian missions in an article by David Perlman. It covers a bit of detail as to what's different about this mission and its risks. Given the recent history of Mars robotic crafts, I worry about the landing, but I have faith in NASA.

So soon we may know - did Mars have water? ice? snow? If so, did Santa go there? Is he an alien? Are elves from Mars?

RIP Arthur Clarke, One of Sci-Fi's Greatest

He turned Jupiter into a second sun and now he's gone. At age 90, one of science fiction's greatest, Arthur C. Clarke, has died. He passed his last years in Sri Lanka, this Brit served in the Royal Air Force in WWII, survived polio, designed preliminary modern satellites, and wrote classics like 2001: A Space Odyssey. That's quite a life.

The Washington Post has a nice write-up, and Space.com wrote about the industry response. USA Today covers his body of work in impressive detail.

I recall vividly the first time I read 2001: A Space Odyssey the realism of his ideas and how they affected me. He was a visionary. Arthur C. Clarke will be missed, but not forgotten, with 80 books and 500 essays.

Star Wars, Candidates, and Shot Down Satellites

It's my birthday; I can cry if I want to... getting older isn't what it used to be. I saw Princess Leia live this week and seeing her age just brings home my own aging. But I was really happy to see Carrie Fisher's one woman autobiographical play, "Wishful Drinking", at the Berkeley Rep. Definitely worth seeing if you like her work or if you are a fan of either of her parents. I personally think both her acting and her writing are stellar.

This week, for those of you who haven't heard, the Navy "successfully" shot down a U.S. spy satellite that was plummeting toward the earth... that's what they say. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but there is evidence out there that the government has been working on this and that related to the ol' 80's Star Wars program for a while now, so although I'm not sure what they used to shoot the thing down, it is interesting in that context. And yeah, I'm glad they used the Navy supposedly for something useful to protect innocent people from getting bits of satellite debris dropped on their heads.

Finally, one of the best things I received in email this week was a link to the Star Wars Guide to the Candidates. Most are out of the race now, but it's hilarious! Enjoy.

A Monopoly On Nerdiness?

So now another AARP aged Microsoft billionaire, Charles Simonyi, supposedly claims he "might be the first nerd in space". Hah. So now Microsoft is claiming a monopoly on nerdiness? Please.

First of all, if he were really that nerdy, he would've figured out a way to make Excel and Word more efficiently coded. Secondly, NASA really stands for "Nerds And Scientific Astronauts", i.e. they have sent nerds in space from the get go. Every shuttle mission has engineers and scientists. And those aren't nerds?

But since it sounds good, BBC covered it as did Slashdot and they're willing to let a few little facts slide I guess, and assume this guy will be the first official "nerd".

I remember learning at Space Camp that the shuttle main computers had a total of 64k between them back in the day. (They've since been upgraded - maybe they're up to 256 now.) That's pretty nerdy. I doubt those people ever left the computer buildings they worked in (back in the days of huge rooms being needed for one computer) but still, they should've at least gotten an honorary astronaut commendation.

I'll only say one thing - if I had billions, I'd spend the $90k or whatever it costs to buy a spot in a rocket from the Russians or on a Virgin Galactic flight in a heartbeat, so more power to him. I hope he has a blast. (Pun intended... it's late as I write this.)

NASA Launches VC for Mars Mission Prep

Here's something interesting I found on VentureBeat: Red Planet Capital, a $75Million venture capital fund fased at NASA Ames here in Mountain View, will be funding businesses that develop technology for space exploration.

In his post, "NASA Ames Research Center has vital role in future space exploration", Pete Worden (NASA Ames Director) writes about all of the new work that is happening local to the Bay Area including partnerships with Google, testing new heat shields for the shuttle replacement, Orion, and developing IT for health monitoring tools. He also notes that robotics and small satellite missions are something for the near future.

Red Planet Capital is a nonprofit organization originally based out of San Mateo. They have eight business areas of focus: "eight business sectors: information technology, communications, biomedical support, environmental systems, smart manufacturing, man-machine systems, energy, and advanced materials." They invest $3-$5 Million in most of their portfolio companies over the course of multiple rounds of funding, starting with sums of $250k. See also: NASA's press release from last month and of course redplanetcapital.com.

Shuttle Atlantis Mission Going Well

Friday, the only remaining Space Shuttle from the original fleet, Atlantis, blasted off from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. NASA blogged the launch. It's amazing how many little things go into a shuttle launch as I learned at Space Camp (technically Space Academy, Level II) in 1989. The blog reminded me.

It features a number of the potential concerns - temperature, emergency landing sites, recovery for the rocket boosters, etc. When you read about these details, it becomes clear why the space program is so expensive. (But don't be intimidated by all of the acronyms - they tend to explain most of them except MECO (main engine cut-off).)

This mission is a routine space station parts delivery mission to complete the station. "STS-115 will resume the on-orbit construction of the station with the delivery of the P3/4 truss and a new set of solar arrays. After the truss is attached to the station, the STS-115 crew will conduct three spacewalks to outfit the truss and to prepare the arrays for operation. The solar arrays are slated to be unfurled on flight day 6."

I remember in 1989 I learned all about the original space station "Freedom" design that was planned and we had a mock-up of it that we used for training. The ISS (International Space Station) we have now is different from what was planned, but it's not as bad as many originally thought it would be.

A Ceres of Planets

A giant asteroid named Ceres is being considered for initiation in the most exclusive club in the Solar System: the Planets.

If your astronomy's a little rusty, here's a refresher: there's an asteroid belt in between Mars and Jupiter - in essence, a bunch of rocks. The predominant theory for the asteroid belt is when the inner planets were forming, there were some pieces of matter on the outskirts that didn't have enough gravity to pull them into a larger planet - thus the asteroid belt.

Composition-wise, Ceres has been called an "embryonic planet" meaning it's still in a form similar to where Earth was 4 billion years ago. What's cool about Ceres is its mantle (the part surrounding the core) may hold more fresh water-made ice than we have on Earth. I can just picture Evian and Crystal Geyser harvesting the water from Ceres in the next milennium.

Why a planet? Because it's big enough to hold its own in relation to the Sun's gravitational pull. Anything with a mass greater than 500,000,000,000,000,000,000 kilograms and a diameter over 800 kilometers (497 miles) will now be a member of the club. Ceres is the biggest of over 10,000 rocks and it holds about 25 percent of the mass of all of the asteroids comprising the belt (which in total is less than the Moon's mass).

Ceres is roughly 1/14th the size of Pluto, but by the new planetary definitions, it would make the cut. Ceres has a diameter roughly the equivalent of Texas. As if Texans needed this to boost their egos - now they can claim not only to be big enough to be their own country, but they can claim to be big enough to be their own planet.

2500 astronomers who comprise the International Astronomical Union will vote on August 24th as to whether Ceres gets admitted into the club. If so, it will be one of twelve members.