Sabbah Report » NASA

Weird news of today

Haitham Sabbah — Wed, 04 Jan 2006 11:01:57 +0000

Nasa team sees explosion on Moon and two-headed snake 'up for auction' then Yahoo shapes up online video project Reality TV on the Internet and finally a British woman marries Dolphin.

Moon-to-Mars Plans Emerge

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 19 Sep 2005 12:45:55 +0000

NASA is set to unveil today details of its new space architecture for Moon-to-Mars trip. Last week SPACE.com and Space News reported that NASA will announce today plans to send four astronauts to Moon in 2018 and sending humans to Mars thereafter. On the list: A re-usable vehicle that's safer than the shuttle; technology for extracting fuel from the destination; and an airbag landing upon return to Earth.

Google Moon

Haitham Sabbah — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 21:57:14 +0000

Once again, the geeks at Google have blown away people with their shenanigans.

Their latest gag has been to import moon maps (courtesy of NASA maps), thus making Google Moon.

Their reasoning? According to the FAQ, it's the following:
"Because we couldn't think of a better way to commemorate the first lunar landing, which occurred on July 20, 1969, than to give our users an opportunity to surf around the lunar surface themselves."

If you've checked out Google Moon I hope you zoomed in all the way; if not, go do it. Isn't that sweet? Now I just need to find a picture of a space monkey and my day will be complete.

Russian sues Nasa for comet upset

Haitham Sabbah — Wed, 06 Jul 2005 21:58:30 +0000

Hours after a Nasa probe crashed into Comet Tempel 1, legal reverberations were felt in a Moscow court. A case which could see Nasa pay a local amateur astrologist millions of dollars in damages.

Writer Marina Bay claims that by slamming the probe into the comet, Nasa endangered the future of civilisation.

"Nobody has yet proven that this experiment was safe," says Ms Bay's lawyer Alexander Molokhov.

"This impact could have altered the orbit of the comet, so now there is a chance that the Tempel may well destroy the Earth some day!"

However, even if the comet stays at a safe distance from Earth, Ms Bay's own life, she thinks, will never be the same again.

New gospels text from Egypt

Haitham Sabbah — Sun, 22 May 2005 18:49:58 +0000

Rubbish dumps of Oxyrhynchus, a city that flourished after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 B.C. reveals texts of Trojan Wars and early Christian gospels that do not appear in the New Testament. Originally developed by NASA scientists and used to map the surface of Mars, multispectral imaging was successfully applied to some badly charred Roman manuscripts that were buried during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in A.D. 79. Examining those carbonized manuscripts under different wavelengths of light suddenly revealed writing that had been invisible to scholars for two centuries.

Talking Loud But Saying Nothing

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 13 May 2005 19:34:53 +0000

NASA is developing a subvocal speech system that could enable you to make a phone call while keeping your lips sealed. How do you talk to someone without opening your mouth? Psychics call it telepathy. NASA refers to it as subvocal speech. Scientists at the NASA Ames Research Center in California have developed a system of tiny sensors that read nerve signals in the throat that control speech. You may not make a sound when, say, you read silently, but your nervous system is buzzing with activity. Recently, they used the system to make the first subvocal cell phone call.

US Air Force Pursuing Antimatter Weapons

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 04 Oct 2004 17:40:36 +0000

"The U.S. Air Force is quietly spending millions of dollars investigating ways to use a radical power source -- antimatter, the eerie 'mirror' of ordinary matter -- in future weapons," the San Francisco Chronicle reports.

Beyond the pointed-ear cool factor, antimatter would make a powerful weapon -- at least in theory. "If electrons or protons collide with their antimatter counterparts, they annihilate each other. In so doing, they unleash more energy than any other known energy source, even thermonuclear bombs," the Chron explains.

The energy from colliding positrons and antielectrons "is 10 billion times ... that of high explosive," Kenneth Edwards, director of the "revolutionary munitions" team at the Munitions Directorate at Eglin Air Force Base, noted in an address to the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). Moreover, 1 gram of antimatter, about 1/25th of an ounce, would equal "23 space shuttle fuel tanks of energy." Thus "positron energy conversion," as he called it, would be a "revolutionary energy source" of interest to those who wage war.

It almost defies belief, the amount of explosive force available in a speck of antimatter -- even a speck that is too small to see. For example: One millionth of a gram of positrons contain as much energy as 37.8 kilograms (83 pounds) of TNT, according to Edwards' March speech. A simple calculation, then, shows that about 50-millionths of a gram could generate a blast equal to the explosion (roughly 4,000 pounds of TNT, according to the FBI) at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

Unlike regular nuclear bombs, positron bombs wouldn't eject plumes of radioactive debris. When large numbers of positrons and antielectrons collide, the primary product is an invisible but extremely dangerous burst of gamma radiation. Thus, in principle, a positron bomb could be a step toward one of the military's dreams from the early Cold War: a so-called "clean" superbomb that could kill large numbers of soldiers without ejecting radioactive contaminants over the countryside.

A copy of Edwards' speech on NIAC's Web site emphasizes this advantage of positron weapons in bright red letters: "No Nuclear Residue."

Interplanetary Laser Communication

Haitham Sabbah — Tue, 10 Aug 2004 00:16:29 +0000

MIT-NASA team to test first interplanetary laser communication link.

A NASA?MIT Lincoln Laboratory team will forge the first laser communication link between Mars and Earth. This unique experiment, part of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, will greatly benefit the transmission of data from robotic spacecraft.

In 2010, the Mars Laser Communication Demonstration (MLCD) will test the first deep-space laser communication link, which promises to transmit data at a rate nearly ten times higher than any existing interplanetary radio communication link. MLCD will fly on the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter spacecraft, which is planned for launch in 2009. The experiment is a partnership among NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and MIT?s Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL).

"If we are planning to put people on Mars, we'll need highly reliable communication links with high data rates, and our team wants to show how this can be done with lasers," said Rick Fitzgerald, Project Manager at NASA Goddard.

"Lincoln Lab is very excited about this program because it challenges us, and it provides an opportunity for the country to field, in-space, a very advanced system far earlier than might otherwise be possible," said Dr. Roy Bondurant, leader of the MIT/LL team.

The expected data rate varies depending on Mars's position in its orbit, the weather and atmospheric conditions on Earth, and whether reception is occurring in daytime or nighttime. When Mars is at its farthest point from Earth and the reception is occurring during daytime, the team expects to receive data at a rate of a million bits per second, but when Mars is at its closest approach and reception is at night, the rate could be thirty times higher. Today, the maximum data rate transmitted to Earth by spacecraft at Mars is about 128,000 bits per second (for NASA's Mars Odyssey spacecraft).

Lasers have not been used for deep-space communications until now because they first had to be made reliable and efficient enough for use in spacecraft millions of miles from Earth. Additionally, the radio frequencies traditionally used for deep space can pass through clouds, while laser (optical frequencies) can be partially to completely blocked by them. The project hopes to overcome this limitation by employing two separate ground terminals, on the chance that if one terminal is clouded over, the other might be clear.

Source: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Space Technology Aids Life on Earth

Haitham Sabbah — Sun, 25 Jul 2004 13:57:25 +0000

Earthly spin-offs of technology developed for space travel has long been a bonus for nations launching humans and machines into orbit.

Two new machines developed with the help of NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have found their way into hospitals on Earth, where physicians have put them to use sniffing out harmful microbes and probing patients' skulls.

In Europe, Russian air scrubbers built for the space station Mir -- and later installed aboard the International Space Station (ISS) -- have been integrated into hospitals to protect staff and patients alike from airborne spores, bacteria and viruses. Dubbed Immunair, the system creates a personal "clean room" that can be deployed around children to ward off infection or protect against biological agents like small pox and anthrax.

"I do believe that it could have a fantastic impact on medicine," Pierre Brisson, head of ESA's technology transfer program, told SPACE.com. "It yields more than a 99.9 percent reduction of bacteria in an environment."

Meanwhile, in California, NASA engineers are working alongside neurosurgeons to turn an infrared video camera normally used to study the Earth into a tumor-hunting brain scanner.

"It's pretty much like an infrared microscope," explained Sarath Gunapala, the camera's lead engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "And it's totally non-invasive."

Breathing easier

Developed for ground-use by the France-based firm AirInSpace, the Immunair portable clean room is an evolution of the Plasmer device originally constructed by Russian engineers to protect the air breathed by Mir cosmonauts from biological contamination.

Plasmer air scrubbers pass contaminated air through a series of strong electric fields and cold-plasma chambers to collect and kill bacteria, molds, fungi and other microorganisms. Bulky versions of the device were first invented in the 1990s and installed first on Mir in 1997 and then aboard the Russian Zvezda module of the ISS in April 2001.

"We knew the technology was capable for eliminating a wide range of microbes," said Laurent Fullana, general manager for AirInSpace, in a telephone interview.

The system successfully screened anthrax and small pox substitutes from the air in laboratory tests and cleared a hospital room full of fungi spores in minutes, he added.

With support from ESA, which provided market research, funds and the industrial suppliers, AirInSpace successfully created the portable Immunair that can be folded and wheeled through hospital corridors like an elementary school blackboard, then set up around an individual patient's bed.

To date, five European hospitals have portable Immunair systems on hand, some for emergency use and others to protect children with leukemia and bone marrow transplants from potentially fatal infections that could arise while their immune systems are suppressed.

Brain scanners

While European researchers work to stamp out airborne particles, a team of JPL engineers and neurosurgeons are hoping their infrared camera will lead to more accurate surgical procedures by isolating tumors from surrounding brain tissue.

Brain tumors run slightly hotter than their surrounding tissue due to their differing metabolic level, said the study's lead scientist Babek Kateb, a research fellow at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine.

By tracking that thermal difference, surgeons will be able to determine definite boundaries between diseased tumor cells and normal brain matter.

Source: Space.com

Blue Moon

Haitham Sabbah — Fri, 09 Jul 2004 23:25:55 +0000

The month of July 2004 has two full moons, which means one of them is a Blue Moon. But will it really be blue? Believe it or not, scientists say blue-colored moons are real.

When you hear someone say "Once in a Blue Moon…" you know what they mean: Rare. Seldom. Maybe even absurd. After all, when was the last time you saw the moon turn blue?
On July 31st, you should look, because there's going to be a Blue Moon.

According to modern folklore, a Blue Moon is the second full moon in a calendar month. Usually months have only one full moon, but occasionally a second one sneaks in. Full moons are separated by 29 days, while most months are 30 or 31 days long; so it is possible to fit two full moons in a single month. This happens every two and a half years, on average.

July has already had one full moon on July 2nd. The next, on July 31st, is by definition a Blue Moon.

But will it really be blue? Probably not. The date of a full moon, all by itself, doesn't affect the moon's color. The moon on July 31st will be pearly-gray, as usual. Unless....

There was a time, not long ago, when people saw blue moons almost every night. Full moons, half moons, crescent moons--they were all blue, except some nights when they were green.

The time was 1883, the year an Indonesian volcano named Krakatoa exploded. Scientists liken the blast to a 100-megaton nuclear bomb. Fully 600 km away, people heard the noise as loud as a cannon shot. Plumes of ash rose to the very top of Earth's atmosphere. And the moon turned blue.

Krakatoa's ash is the reason. Some of the ash-clouds were filled with particles about 1 micron (one millionth of a meter) wide--the right size to strongly scatter red light, while allowing other colors to pass. White moonbeams shining through the clouds emerged blue, and sometimes green.

Blue moons persisted for years after the eruption. People also saw lavender suns and, for the first time, noctilucent clouds. The ash caused "such vivid red sunsets that fire engines were called out in New York, Poughkeepsie, and New Haven to quench the apparent conflagration," according to volcanologist Scott Rowland at the University of Hawaii.

Other less potent volcanos have turned the moon blue, too. People saw blue moons in 1983, for instance, after the eruption of the El Chichon volcano in Mexico. And there are reports of blue moons caused by Mt. St. Helens in 1980 and Mount Pinatubo in 1991.

The key to a blue moon is having in the air lots of particles slightly wider than the wavelength of red light (0.7 micron)--and no other sizes present. This is rare, but volcanoes sometimes spit out such clouds, as do forest fires:

"On September 23, 1950, several muskeg fires that had been quietly smoldering for several years in Alberta suddenly blew up into major--and very smoky--fires," writes physics professor Sue Ann Bowling of the University of Alaska. "Winds carried the smoke eastward and southward with unusual speed, and the conditions of the fire produced large quantities of oily droplets of just the right size (about 1 micron in diameter) to scatter red and yellow light. Wherever the smoke cleared enough so that the sun was visible, it was lavender or blue. Ontario and much of the east coast of the U.S. were affected by the following day, but the smoke kept going. Two days later, observers in England reported an indigo sun in smoke-dimmed skies, followed by an equally blue moon that evening."

Source: NASA News

The Sun

Haitham Sabbah — Wed, 30 Jun 2004 00:02:06 +0000

On June 21, the Sun reached its northernmost point in planet Earth's sky, marking a season change and the first solstice of the year 2004. In celebration, consider this delightfully detailed, brightly colored image of the active Sun. From the EIT instrument onboard the space-based SOHO observatory, this picture is a false-color composite of three images all made in extreme ultraviolet light. Each individual image highlights a different temperature regime in the upper solar atmosphere and was assigned a specific color; red at 2 million, green at 1.5 million, and blue at 1 million degrees C. The combined image shows bright active regions strewn across the solar disk, which would otherwise appear as dark groups of sunspots in visible light images, along with some magnificent plasma loops and an immense prominence at the right hand solar limb.

Source: SOHO

Private Space Travel?

Haitham Sabbah — Mon, 14 Jun 2004 23:53:32 +0000

Dreamers Hope a Catalyst Will Rise From the Mojave Desert.

One week from today, from a runway in a barren reach of the Mojave Desert 100 miles northeast of Los Angeles, Burt Rutan will try sending a pilot higher than anyone has ever flown in a private plane.

A longtime designer of innovative aircraft, he plans to shoot his creation, a rocket called SpaceShipOne, 62 miles above the earth. If the flight is successful, Mr. Rutan and his sponsor, Paul G. Allen, the billionaire co-founder of Microsoft, say it will usher in an age of privately financed space travel and even spacefaring laboratories and manufacturing plants, at down-to-earth prices.

The flight next week is a two-step process. An aircraft, the White Knight, will carry SpaceShipOne from the runway to 50,000 feet, where it will be released. SpaceShipOne will then glide until the pilot fires the rocket motor for about 80 seconds and the craft accelerates to three times the speed of sound.

The pilot, whose name will be announced the day before the flight, will then cut the motor and feel three minutes of weightlessness as the ship reaches the top of its climb in the black sky of space. Then it will fall back toward the earth, and the pilot will glide it back to the runway.

In a sense, the flight is old news: humans have been blasted into space for more than 40 years. But those efforts have been financed by governments. Mr. Rutan, who heads his own aircraft design company, Scaled Composites, says his goal with SpaceShipOne is to show that space is no longer a territory reachable only through the resources of empires, just as the Wright brothers proved that the skies were not just for birds and balloonists.

"The whole world realized that, for crying out loud, these are just bicycle shop guys," he said of the Wright brothers. In the same way, he said, if he succeeds, "people around the world might say, 'Wait a minute - I can do this!' "

But that might not happen any time soon. For one thing, legislation that would allow commercial spaceports for human travel is stalled in Congress. "Without timely legislation, the flight might be a mere passing stunt instead of the herald of a new era," said Charles Lurio, an independent space consultant.

Although some of the other teams competing for the X Prize are operating secretly, none are believed to be as far along as the Rutan-Allen group.

The rivals say they are cheering Mr. Rutan and Mr. Allen on. "Ultimately, we are all on the same team," said Geoff Sheerin, who heads Canadian Arrow, a team with a sleek spacecraft design that evokes Buck Rogers. But he added, "You don't have a prize until you have a prize."

The suborbital flight is less punishing than what NASA puts space shuttles through; the speed required to reach orbit is a blistering 25 times the speed of sound, and the risks of heating and damage from re-entering the atmosphere are enormous. "It's a safe first step," said Dr. Peter H. Diamandis, the chairman of the X Prize Foundation. "Or, I should say, a safer first step."

The flight of SpaceShipOne will not be risk-free. Atmospheric stress will be high, and unforeseen problems could emerge.

"That's part of being a test pilot," Mr. Allen said. "The people that undertake these things know the risks and do everything possible to minimize the risks. But they are still there, and they are still real." As for his own desire to reach space, he said, "I'm going to wait until there's quite a few more test flights down the road."

Source: New York Times

The Sound of Big Bang!

Haitham Sabbah — Sun, 13 Jun 2004 12:38:02 +0000

Universe started with hiss, not bang.

The Universe began not with a bang but with a low moan, building into a roar that gave way to a deafening hiss. And those sounds gave birth to the first stars.

Cosmologists do not usually think in terms of sound, but this aural picture is a good way to think about the Universe's beginnings, says astronomer Mark Whittle of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Whittle has reconstructed the cosmic cacophony from data teased out over the past couple of years from the high-resolution mapping by NASA's WMAP spacecraft of the cosmic microwave background radiation, the afterglow of the hot early Universe.

The variations in the cosmic background radiation expose the relative clumpiness of the early cosmos at a variety of different scales. These density variations began as quantum fluctuations in the moments after the big bang, and then propagated out as sonic waves. The denser regions became the seeds of galaxies and stars, which is why astronomers are so interested in them.

Translating the observed frequency spectrum directly to sound yields tones far too low for ears to hear - some 50 octaves below middle A - but transpose the score up all those octaves and you can listen to it.

As for volume, the intensity of the variations corresponds to about 110 decibels, as loud as a rock concert. Whittle has also used the best available cosmological models to map the way the vibrations evolved over time, showing how the chords of the big bang changed over the Universe's first million years or so.

Source: New Scientist

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