Carnival of Space 91

1.
Music of the Spheres has Europa Visitor

FlyingSinger brushes up his space navigation skills and prepares for his April IYA podcast with a flight from Europa to Callisto, simulated in Orbiter.

2. On February 16 we celebrated Galileo’s 445th birthday: “Yet It Moves” from A Babe in the Universe.

During this International Year of Astronomy we celebrate Galileo’s telescope observations 400 years ago. He did not start his career believing Earth circles the Sun, but his telescope revealed phases of Venus and moons circling Jupiter. 445 years after his birth Galileo is still an example for today’s scientist.

3. Astroblog also reflects on the anniversary of Galileo in Blogging the Starry Messenger

In honour of International year of Astronomy, and the 400th anniversary of Galileo peering through a telescope at the heavens, I’m blogging Galileo’s “Sidereal Messenger”, Galileo’s first report of his telescopic observations. Each week I’m going to blog one “chapter” of the Starry Messenger (actually, it doesn’t really have chapters, but it has self contained sections I’ll talk about. This week I start with the Introduction.

4. Scouting Life (Canada) published articles in their winter issue to help youth leaders conduct stargazing sessions. Reprints can be found at Explore the Night Sky and Make Your Stargazing Events Shine

5. Bad Astronomy looks at what is known so far about the Texas Fireball.

A tremendous fireball — also called a bolide, or a very bright meteor — was seen in southern Texas on Sunday, February 15th, just before 11:00 a.m. local time. Many people have described it as very bright, small, and moving rapidly.

6. Centauri Dreams writes about “361 Civilizations in the Galaxy?”

This follows up an earlier post on recent statistical treatments of the Drake Equation, trying to figure out to a greater degree of accuracy how many technological civilizations may be out there. Nobody knows, of course, but it’s intriguing to watch the different methods being used to juggle the inputs!

7. Astroengine looks at what could be liquid water on Mars

8. The Meridiani Journal, a chronicle of planetary exploration, also looks at liquid water brines on Mars.

9. Spacewriter looks at a garden in Hawaii that is in the shape of the Milky Way

10. Out of the Cradle has an interview that looks at the details of business, law and economics for the new Space Age

11. Starts with a Bang asks “Can you slow time down?”

12. OrbitalHub looks at the Dawn spacecraft and the Flyby of Mars.

The Dawn spacecraft is currently performing the Mars flyby phase of its mission. The purpose of the Mars flyby is to alter the trajectory of the spacecraft in order to rendezvous with its first scientific target in the main asteroid belt. The scientific objective of the Dawn mission is to answer important questions about the origin and the evolution of our solar system.

13. Beyond Apollo: looks back at the early Shuttle manipulator demo plans, which ultimately flew on the Shuttle in 1981.

14. Robot Explorers: looks at a proposed Saturn Ring Observer mission.

15. Martian Chronicles looks at the sand dunes of Mars.

It’s part of an ongoing series of posts based on a huge 2001 paper that summarizes the results of the Mars Orbital Camera (MOC): the first high-res camera in orbit around Mars.

16. Dave Mosher of Discovery Space provides: String theory — a proposed “theory of everything” — is criticized for its lack of experiments, but scientists are could be building a case to tear that wall down.

17. A story about imaging the atmosphere of, what else?… a variable star; from your variable star astronomer blogger, Simostronomy.

18. LPI has tables of information on the recently announced Lunar Instruments.

19. A neato photo of a “diamond ring” image of a lunar eclipse from the Moon from the Planetary Society.

20. Robert Simpson of orbiting frog looks at tracking the debris from last week’s satellite collision using Google Earth.

21. 21st Century Waves looks at “North Korea’s New Space Program?”

22. Galaxy Zoo, by Bob Nichol, reflects on his
reflects on the launch of Zoo 2 in his first ever blog entry.

23. Universe Today looks at a new company that is looking to produce Space Based Solar Power Within a Decade.

24. This site looked at detailed studies of cement jet printing buildings on thd moon.

25. As well a collection of photos and vidoes of the Nuclear propulsion that has been technically doable for decades, project Orion and Super-Orion.


Super-Orion whose 400 meter diameter footprint covers about 30 foot ball fields and has the internal volume of about 10 great pyramids at Giza. The hundreds of nuclear explosive above ground tests from the 1960s could be repeated from a launch in the Pacific so that the true space age could begin with a kickstart of 120,000 Space Shuttle loads not just to low earth orbit but anywhere in the solar system. What was done for geopolitical and military posturing could be done again for the future of mankind. Becoming a true space faring civilization if we could only understand that it would actually be safer and provide huge economic and technical benefits.

UPDATE
26. Cheap Astronomy has published a new podcast called Gravity Wells – and how to get out of them. It’s not as easy as you might think.

27. Cumbrian Sky looks at NASA’s plan to go back to Jupiter

in 2020 – about the same time NASA is planning to send astronauts Back To The Moon – two rockets will blast off, from different sites, each one carrying a spaceproeb bound for Jupiter. Six years later the probes would enter the Jovian system and go into orbit around its Galilean satellites, Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto, paying particular attention to two of those moons, namely Europa and Ganymede.

28. A poem for the Mars Rovers