What's Up? The Space Place

Hey Space Placers! I hope all of you in the DC, MD, VA area are OK!  I am down in Charlottesville this weekend and just got Internet back. We got hit with 65+ mph winds at 10 pm last night and the lightning erupted knocking out power. Fortunately we got power back at 2 am on Saturday but Internet was down until just 5 minutes ago. We  were very, very fortunate to have power unlike the hundreds of thousands who do not. I have lived in VA for almost 19 years and I have been through 7 typhoons, including a category 5. The weather is becoming more violent, plain and simple. We in VA are in a declared state of emergency due to the largest power outage in the state's history caused by a non-hurricane event. Temperature records fell by the thousands between Friday and Saturday across the U.S. I hope all of you are safe, cool and well. I will start back to the stars for you tomorrow. May you get a good night's rest..... Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! NASA's Cassini mission at Saturn has collected data that indicates that the largest moon of Saturn, Titan, probably has an underground ocean. The analysis of data returned during close flybys of the enigmatic moon led investigators to conclude that the best fit to the data they saw was the presence of a global underground ocean. Titan has already captured our imagination and curiosity due to its huge lakes of liquid methane, opaque atmosphere and organic material believed to cover the surface of the large moon. Scientists think that the subsurface ocean replenishes the methane in the atmosphere. Read MoreAbout It:  http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/28jun_titanocean/  and http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2012-190 Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! Continuing today on Mars, research is underway to try and find a quicker way to get humans to Mars. Current technology requires about 214 days or 7 months - ouch. But new research efforts in nuclear fusion propulsion are underway at the University of Alabama Hunstville. If this propulsion research is successful and lead to the ability to manufacture and use such technology, we could get to Mars in 7 weeks! It will be a long road to get from the drawing board to space however but the results and spin off knowledge gained in the process will be useful. Read More ABout Pulsed Nuclear Fusion propulsion: http://uah.edu/news/items/10-research/2501-slapshot-to-deep-space Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! I thought it would be appropriate to provide you the latest Mars findings since we have been blogging about Curiosity the past few days. First, any idea how many craters there are on Mars? How about 635,000 craters one kilometer or larger? That's what researchers came up with after counting the craters based on imagery returned from a variety of spacecraft. Read More About It:  http://www.agu.org/news/press/pr_archives/2012/2012-28.shtml . Another recent study based upon analysis of meteorites from Mars, has determined that Mars has extensive water in its' interior similar to that of Earth. Earth was the only planet known to have vast reservoirs of water in its interior but this study shows that Mars does too. This finding raises the distinct possibility that Mars had conditions needed for life as we know it in its' past. Read More About It:  http://carnegiescience.edu/news/extensive_water_mar’s_interior I thinkCuriosity is going to be very, v...

Hey SPace Placers! Please see my commentary on the Voyager  spacecraft:  http://www.wtop.com/904/2916750/The-Space-Place Thanks for reading. Sky Guy in VA

Hey Space Placers! In 42 days, August 5th, NASA's Mars Science Laboratory, called Curiosity, will hopefully land in Gale Crater on Mars. Yesterday, June 23, I blogged about the "7Minutes of Terror" the spacecraft must endure in order to land safely. Today I want to tell you a bit more about the mission and landing site selected. NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) mission managers wanted to select a site where the maximum opportunity could be afforded for Curiosity to accomplish her mission, which is to determine whether Mars ever had an environment suitable for microbial life. In other words,Curiosity will seek to determine whether Mars could have supported life in its past. To do this Curiosity is equipped with instruments designed to accomplish this task and which are capable of finding microbes if they exist today on Mars. Being bigger and nuclear powered, Curiosity will be able to explore the full Martian year unlike her predecessors which had to hunker do...

Hey Space Placers! As I write this NASA's Curiosity Mars Science Laboratory is about six weeks away from its August 5th predicted landing in Gale Crater. The mission is progressing perfectly and all systems are go. It is hard to imagine what Curiosity must go through in order to land safely on Mars and begin her mission of exploration. It is known as "the 7 minutes of Terror" to all associated with figuring out how to land a 10 foot long, one-ton spacecraft traveling at 13,000 miles per hour to zero miles per hour in that short time span. NASA has released a You Tube video that gives you a front row seat to the tension and terror that spacecraft and mission team must go through to get to the surface of the Red Planet. Enjoy the 7 Minutes of Terror:  http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=146903741 More on the mission tomorrow. Sky Guy in VA