Send your name to the asteroid belt on the Dawn spacecraft. Your name will be recorded onto a microchip that will be placed aboard the spacecraft accompanying it on its mission to the asteroid belt. After entering your name below, you will have the opportunity to print a document that verifies your journey aboard the spacecraft.
My name is travelling on the Dawn mission, a fitting birthday gift. Thank you to NASA.
JPL.NASA.GOV: Feature Stories: The Spark of a New Era
The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is celebrating it’s 70th birthday.
In this feature the early history of JPL is described.
I consider the JPL to be the most succesful NASA subdivision, as the true pioneeers of planetary exploration.
70 years ago my own mother was born and my father was 7. Back then, the things we do today would have been considered so far into the future, that you might have been committed to a closed ward, if you had suggested that humanity could, for instance, visit all the planets in the solar system within a lifetime. Just try to imagine where we can be in another 70 years, what put’s it into perspective is that it might be so amazing, that we can’t even begin to imagine it.
Congratulations to the JPL.
NASA – ‘McMurdo’ Panorama from Spirit’s ‘Winter Haven’
To celebrate the 1,000th sol of the Spirit rover Mars mission, NASA has released a panorama.
Congratulations to NASA with this amazing success, makes you wonder what the next generation of rovers will achieve.
Oct. 26, 2006, marks Spirit’s 1,000th sol of what was planned as a 90-sol mission. (A sol is a Martian day, which lasts 24 hours, 39 minutes, 35 seconds). The rover has lived through the most challenging part of its second Martian winter. Its solar power levels are rising again. Spring in the southern hemisphere of Mars will begin in early 2007. Before that, the rover team hopes to start driving Spirit again toward scientifically interesting places in the “Inner Basin” and “Columbia Hills” inside Gusev crater. The McMurdo panorama is providing team members with key pieces of scientific and topographic information for choosing where to continue Spirit’s exploration adventure.
Den første fugl var en and (Originally uploaded by K.Job).
Hmm…Illuderet (ahem Illustreret) Videnskab skulle nok overveje at læse det de selv skriver…
For the people with limited grasp of the Danish language…
“And” means “duck” AND “hoax” in Danish…So the first oiseaux (bird, fugl) was a duck (and=hoax)
LOL
Yesterday I went to see the movie The Science of Sleep, directed and written by Michel Gondry, the fantastic French director, and my expectations were quite elevated!
For those who’ve never heard of Michel Gondry, just dig in your memory for the GREATEST music videos EVER made, and the top 10 will be dominated by his works.
He is best know for his works with Björk, Chemical Brothers, Foo Fighters, Kylie Minouge(!) and of course: The White Stripes.
Just one comment to the movie: “MICHEL GONDRY VOUS ETES GENIAL”. This is the greatest movie of creative vision since Brazil, I simply love it. It’s such a tribute to the creative mind and life in general – and I ended up with a tear in my eye because of the beautiful ending, that was a dream or was it?
I will go see it again and again and can’t wait until it is released on DVD.
It also made me realise how much I miss Paris, the scene where they’re dumping a TV in Canal St. Martin, my favorite spot on the planet, is priceless, and I also miss the love of my life (so far)! Now the tears are turning into a river! Quote: Once a woman has decided to dump you, she CAN’T change her mind! Unquote. I NEED TO GET OVER HER, and HER as well! Isis where are you?
10 stars out of 6 possible!
BTW! I’m in love – should I go seek out my love consultant, or maybe hire a new one (I already know who that should be!)?
Yesterday I went to see the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”, a documentary that follows former vice-president Al Gore’s struggle to spread global awareness of the crisis facing humanity as a result of global warming.
As if I didn’t know it already, global warming is indeed a fact, and it will have big consequences. The opposition to Al Gore and the environmental scientists, defined by people like Bjørn Lomborg, need to stop doing the oil industry’s dirty laundry, humanity faces other serious problems, but this is the one that will impact all of us – the Earth might be rendered uninhabitable, the Planet Venus has an atmosphere filled with greenhouse gasses, could this be the destiny of Earth?
The facts are presented: Global temperature and CO2 levels in the atmosphere is strongly correlated, higher CO2 levels equal higher temperature. From core samples from the Arctic and the Antarctic we know that CO2 levels have never been above 300ppm over a period of 650.000 years, right now it’s above that, and the levels are skyrocketing.
I hope that this movie will be an eye opener, and the practical advise on how to take action on the web-site (climatecrisis.net) is very useful.
The movie ends on a positive note, the fact that we’ve already managed to control a global environmental crisis, the hole in the ozone-layer, leaves room for optimism.
Al Gore used to be the Next President of the USA, I’m actually happy that he lost the election, because he’s been on the grind spreading awareness of this, the most important, challenge facing humanity.
I have some issues with the movie. I could have been without the segment on the lost election, and I really doubt that you directly can see the passing of “the clean air act” in the ice-core samples. Al Gore clearly loves his Mac – but isn’t he a member of Apple’s board?
JPL.NASA.GOV: Feature Stories – Honey, I Shrunk the Solar System
If you woke up Thursday morning and sensed something was different about the world around you, you’re absolutely right. Pluto is no longer a planet.
As expected the 9th planet Pluto, is no longer considered a planet, but more “the mother of all Kuiper belt objects”, or more precisely Pluto is now considered a “dwarf planet”.
I must admit that I sort of fail to see the importance of this decision, it’s more like “splitting words”. “Planet” is nothing but a word that means “wanderer”, refering to the fact that planets move across the sky unlike stars (well I know that they do, but slowly, so within this definition stars could also be consideres “planets”, so it is actually good to have a somewhat clearer definiton…).
The problem is that within the old definition, the number of objects to consider for planetary status is likely to grow, with the improved observation technology, and the scientific community would potentially be locked in mindless debates, since the discovery and classification of a planet would be significant.
Well…The science books need to be rewritten, or maybe not! Wikipedia has already been updated with detailed information on this subject, and Pluto has already been reclassified in the article on Planets.
Welcome back Discovery. It’s amazing watching the landing procedure as seen from the cockpit, the descend is steep and quick.
It will be interesting to hear the post mission briefings, I hope that the Shuttle is finally considered safe again, so that the construction of the International Space Station can pick up pace.
Congratulations to NASA with a successful mission, but what’s with the constant need to reboot the computers?
Phew…The Shuttle has returned to space, and for the first time a Shuttle Launch on the 4th of July.
It’s always nervewrecking to watch a Shuttle launch, and it’s great to have live coverage by NASA TV that is streaming over the Internet from this address:
Congratulations to NASA with the fitting celebration of Independence Day.
The Shuttle program is nearing it’s end, it’s the end of an era and a too complex program, that so far (touch wood) has resulted in the loss of 2 orbiters and 14 lives.
NASA is now looking back to the Saturn V program for inspiration, and a couple of new launch vehicles will be introduced, ending with the return to the moon by the end of the next decade.
Everytime the Shuttle program seemed to be running smoothly, we encountered a major disaster, making for a rude awakening to the dangers of space exploration.
The space program is the greatest project humanity is currently involved in, and it’s a great inspiration, and space is finally opening up due to the X-Prize and SpaceShipOne.
We’re once again taking baby steps into the final frontier, following the lead of the Apollo pioneers. Earth is too dangerous a place to stay.
HOPL: History Of Programming Languages from ACM
After browsing the Alan Kay Wikipedia entry, my attention was drawn to the “History Of Programming Languages”, proceeding that has been published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
This is a very good collection of documents, usually written by the people who were involved in the development of the different languages, including some Danes – Concurrent Pascal. Unfortunately ACM requires a subscription to access the articles, I guess I need to fork out some money and get the paper print.
Hmm great! The ACM web-site currently has an error, so I can’t buy the book online. Should I join ACM? It’ll cost me USD 198, if I throw in an account for the digital library. It would be cool to have access to the ACM digital library.
Considering…BTW it looks like ACM should add some new articles, e.g.. on Java, Python and Ruby.
Sure a lot of things has happened since 1993, but I suppose none of the newer languages are revolutionary, or even more than marginally different from what already existed in 1993, that is somewhat discouraging.