Astronomy
The study of the universe and space, including planets, the solar system and comets
Stuck in Transit – Unchaining Ourselves From the Rocket Equation
Last fall, after much anticipation, the Augustine Committee presented us with their assessment of the future of space exploration. Its basic conclusion was that at currently envisioned budgets, the Program of Record (a.k.a. ESAS, Project Constellation) would not get us back to the Moon before many...
March 11, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Ice at the north pole of the Moon
Last year, India’s Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter spent eight months mapping the surface of the Moon. I had the honor of being the Principal Investigator of an experiment on that mission, the Mini-SAR imaging radar. The purpose of this experiment is to map and characterize the deposits within perman...
March 01, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Talismanic Thinking
Wild claims are being tossed about regarding the future U.S. space program. Recipes for success are touted and e-mailed around – concepts based more on wishful thinking than on solid science and engineering. My friend Rand Simberg refers to those who would replicate anew the means we devised to g...
February 27, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
A Lunar Visionary
My good friend Klaus Heiss is resting in the hospital after recently suffering a stoke. Klaus is not widely known or familiar to many in the space community, but over the years, he has had a major impact on our national space program – a major player in both the Shuttle program and in helping to p...
February 23, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Bill Gordon, Father of the Arecibo Observatory
William Gordon, the Cornell University engineer who dreamed up the world's largest dish antenna, died this week at the age of 92. His recollections of the Arecibo Telescope's early days were included in a story that ran in our October 1997 issue, not long after the observatory was upgraded with new...
February 19, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Confusing the Means and the Ends
The release of the proposed NASA budget and new “direction” has led to an intense “cage fight” in the blogosphere over who has the best rocket and the best architecture. Many “New Space” advocates are ecstatic, viewing the cancellation of the Constellation program as vindication of their view that...
February 13, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
And Now, Starring the Sun
Quick, what's the most photogenic object in our solar system? Earth? Yeah, pretty. Saturn? Lovely rings. But for sheer drama and majesty, it's hard to beat pictures of the sun taken from spacecraft like SOHO and STEREO.Those satellites are about to be eclipsed (sorry) by the Solar Dynamics Observat...
February 11, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Vision Impaired
The release of the new proposed budget for NASA has unleashed a blizzard of news articles and commentary. The administration proposes to terminate Constellation, the agency effort to design and build a new space transportation system to carry people to low Earth orbit and beyond. In its place, th...
February 03, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
When Asteroids Collide
Is that what's going on in this Hubble Space Telescope image?
February 02, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
No take-backs!
Meteorite enthusiasts—c'mon, what's not to love about a meteorite?—are abuzz over the news that the "Lorton meteorite," which smashed through the roof of a medical office outside Washington, D.C., on January 18, is the chondrite du jour in a controversy over who owns it.Doctors Marc Gallini and Fra...
January 29, 2010 |
By Pat Trenner
Asteroid Insurance
Remember we told you the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) would be good at spotting near-Earth asteroids?Well, it is. And it has.Here (the red dot at center) is WISE's first find, a half-mile-wide chunk of rock called 2010 AB78, currently about 98 million miles from Earth. It's no threat,...
January 28, 2010 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Beyond LEO - Flexible Path Revisited
In an interesting post at Vision Restoration, “Ray” tackles the desultory Flexible Path (FP) architecture of the Augustine committee, which calls for human missions to low gravity destinations and delays missions to the lunar and martian surface. The problems he finds with FP are similar to points...
January 23, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Ka-boom
At the recent American Astronomical Society meeting in Washington D.C., astronomers Peter Garnavich of the University of Notre Dame and Alex Filippenko of the University of California at Berkley described a whopping stellar explosion called Y-155. It started out as a Humpty Dumpty of a star, about ...
January 19, 2010 |
By Mike Klesius
Robotic Sample Return and Interpreting Lunar History: The Importance of Getting it Right
Deciphering the cratering history of the Moon is an important scientific problem. My previous post discussed early lunar cratering history, the apparent impact “cataclysm” 3.8 billion years ago, its significance to Earth’s early history and how remaining questions might be resolved by collecting a...
January 11, 2010 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Arguing about Human Space Exploration
Hot rumor has it that, like Christmas, the Obama Administration’s response to the Augustine Committee Report, Seeking a Human Space Program Worthy of a Great Nation, is imminent. Much excitement is discernible in the space blogosphere that a major change is at hand.The Augustine Committee report c...
December 16, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Hubble Goes Even Deeper
Sure it's pretty, and sure it boggles the mind, but maybe the most astonishing thing about the Hubble Deep Field image is that some scientists were initially against it. To quote from an article in our August/September 1996 issue:For Robert Williams, using the Hubble Space Telescope to peer deeply...
December 08, 2009 |
By Tony Reichhardt
Another Moon-forming collision?
A recent discovery from the Spitzer Space Telescope may yield new insight into the origin of our own Moon. Although this discovery was in the news some time ago, the advent of the Augustine report and the LCROSS mission results have eclipsed it.The Spitzer Telescope found evidence for a planetary ...
December 07, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
Thanksgiving on the Moon: A Lunar Feast
We often hear the Moon described as a lifeless desert, a barren rock in space where nothing can survive. Although the Moon is certainly different from the Earth, it is hardly barren. From the 1970’s through the 1990’s (largely before we knew about the presence of water and other volatiles in the ...
November 22, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
A Rainbow on the Moon
Five weeks ago a crater from the LCROSS impact formed on the Moon. The pre-impact build-up had been sensational, but the actual event was largely invisible to observers on Earth. It was a different story on the Moon. The slowly growing impact ejecta curtain threw water ice particles and vapor far...
November 14, 2009 |
By Paul D. Spudis
