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hink its the best image ever taken of that extremely distant plant and it lso shows multiple distant galaxies as fuzzy patches a handful of stars that can be identified by their spiky appearance caused by diffraction in the telescope and 14 of the 27 known moons it has oberon titania umbriel juliet perdita rosalind puck belinda desdemona cressida ariel miranda bianca and portia i couldn t tell you where they are but they are basically the white dots close to the planet the version of this new image that have was released shows a wide view with several galaxies but what i find really amazing to look at is this zoomed in view that shows somuch detail on the planet itself and its rings a very mysterious very faraway planet right here in our own solar system that we know relatively little about including why uniquely among solar system planets it rotates sideways instead of up and down that s why we get to see it in this pole on orientation with its rings fully displayed and face on posted by dlc 2 09 am 0 comments thursday november 22 curious about curiosity the media are abuzz with speculation about the expected announcement of new results from the curiosity rover on mars at the agu meeting on dec 3 expectations were fanned to a frenzy by john grotzinger s comments to npr s joe palca this week in which he said this would be one for the history books and would be earthshaking needless to say that has triggered ever escalating notions of what it might be from the silly to the superlative and sublime what s more likely is that it will indeed be an important announcement but not of the extreme kind people are thinking of it s probably not something wriggling or slithering in front of the camera and it s probably not a fossil though lord knows i d be delighted to be proved wrong most likely it s one of two things 1 organics in the soil ever since the viking mission in 1976 this has been the biggest bugaboo about life on mars no organics were detected by the instrument on that mission a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer that should have found them that non detection was taken by most scientists ever since to contradict the results of the labelled release test which otherwise would have been seen as a positive detection of living breathing microbes on mars since then other tests have demonstrated that fairly abundant organics on mars could in fact have fallen below the threshold of detection of that gcms but the prevailing view for all these years that viking had failed to find signs of life had become too deeply ingrained for the new evidence to make much of an impression so while direct detection of organics in the soil by the much more sensitive instruments on curiosity would of course not prove the presence of life there now it would show that the one piece of evidence that had been interpreted as ruling out a positive detection by viking has now been shown to be false at the very least that would open the question anew and provide a strong impetus to carry out the follow up experiments which could clinch the matter and which should have been done long ago 2 methane in the air though this is also an indirect sign it too could provide strong evidence for the presence of living breathing microorganism on mars today curiosity detected signs of methane when it first arrived but a second set of tests found none so the initial results were then taken to have been just residual contamination carried there from earth but if a third set of tests did find methane again that would show it had to be martian after all and while there are some highly unlikely non biological mechanisms that could explain methane in the air of mars seeing methane that comes and goes would be very very hard to explain that way so like organics this would be a strong indicator of extant life forms on mars today either of these findings while very exciting and likely to cause a turnaround in the prevailing scientific thinking about whether life exists on mars today are nevertheless indirect complex and likely to remain highly controversial for a long time but if nothing else it will finally provide the needed spur for future missions to carry out the tests that would be needed to prove it once and for all or i could be wrong and the new findings could be something completely different in any case we ll know what it is a week from next monday posted by dlc 8 15 pm 0 comments sunday july 12 earthlings going to mars i have written many times over 30 some years about why i m quite convinced based on the results of the viking experiments in 1976 and supported by a lot of new evidence since then that living organisms exist on mars today examples include my book and articles in the atlantic wired new scientist etc we ll certainly have the proof within the next couple of decades and we ll see if i ve been right about this along with a few others including viking scientist gil levin and former nasa scientist robert jastrow i also think it s pretty likely though by no means proven that terrestrial life may actually have originated on mars and that primitive microbes were first brought here by meteorites blasted off by asteroid impacts on mars we ll find that out eventually too and it s also almost certain that living organisms from earth have already contaminated the surface of mars see this story for example but in the meantime a new and very interesting experiment on a russian spacecraft to be launched this october will be testing part of that hypothesis the ability of microbial life to survive the radiation zero g the shock of blastoff and so on of an interplanetary trip four vials of organisms will be carried to mars actually to the surface of its moon phobos and then brought back to earth for analysis the experiment is happening thanks to the planetary society there s a good story with some of the details here it sounds like a good selection of organisms they re testing the results should be very interesting i certainly hope it works unlike the last attempt to send a biologically interesting experiment to mars a fairly crude simple followup to the viking labeled release life detection test that was carried aboard the russian mars 96 probe in guess what year which alas ended up somewhere in the atacama desert of northern chile after a launch failure and was never found they ll also be bringing back to earth some soil from phobos which could be quite interesting and which is a much better idea than bringing back mars soil which i think would be premature at this point given the danger of potential contamination if as i ve just been ranting on about there is life there now that s closely related to us i m excited about this new mission and i hope it all succeeds posted by dlc 1 35 pm 0 comments monday june 16 another day another blog i haven t posted anything on this blog for quite a while but don t give up on me yet i still may from time to time but in the meantime you might take a look at a new blog i ve started on the discovery channel s new space website it s devoted to space and astronomy projects involving college students it s called next generation please take a look at it here posted by dlc 12 57 am 3 comments tuesday september 18 when i was your age a million pluto fans i ve already ranted at length in this space on my feelings about the iau s decision last year in my opinion silly and misguided to demote pluto from planetary status for example my postings here and here and i knew that it was an issue that had attracted a lot of interest from the public and especially students far beyond the level of public interest in most astronomical subjects i was struck at the time by how quickly it became fodder for cartoons and even songs written about the ex planet but i hadn t realized just how powerful that level of interest was last week i joined the popular online social networking site facebook because i had read about some other journalists joining the site and finding it useful almost immediately my page on facebook began showing me the names of groups on the service that i might be interested in based on the groups i had already signed up for and the very cute name of one of those groups immediately caught my eye when i was your age pluto was a planet as soon as i went to that group s page it blew my socks off the other groups i had joined had a few dozen members or a hundred or so one of them even had a few thousand but the pluto group already had 950 000 members in the days since then it has now surged across the million member mark talk about striking a nerve i later read an article about the group here that says within a few weeks of its founding last year it had become the second most popular group on the whole facebook site most of the top groups have more predictable subjects political or social causes but this one was a big surprise passions run very strong about poor little pluto as i had predicted but even more than i expected alan stern lead scientist for the new horizons mission that s on its way to pluto and now a top nasa official has been leading the charge to overturn the iau s misguided decision and i wish him well i think nothing substantive is likely to happen until the iau has its next general meeting in 2009 but maybe the movement will have gained enough steam by then to get the decision changed posted by dlc 12 58 pm 2 comments thursday september 13 google me to the moon a big new prize was announced today which may help to spur further development of private space vehicles the way the 10 million ansari x prize did three years ago see one of my stories here about the winning spaceshipone coming from the same folks the new 30 million google lunar x prize will be awarded to the first private company to send an unmanned rover vehicle to the moon travel at least 500 meters on the surface and send back lots of pictures of its activities to earth alan boyle has lots of details in his story today on msnbc among those who may try for the prize is armadillo aerospace the odds on favorite to win 2 million next month at the lunar lander challenge in new mexico armadillo s pixel has already demonstrated that it s capable of winning the prize as long as nothing goes disastrously wrong between now and then see my story on that today at technology review things are really heating up in the private space arena as i ve been predicting for years this could be the busiest year yet and next year even more so posted by dlc 5 58 pm 0 comments tuesday march 20 another step toward a new age elon musk s falcon 1 rocket made a very impressive takeoff today setting a series of records and making space exploration technologies only the second company ever to send a privately financed rocket into space after burt rutan s scaled composites which flew spaceshipone to 100 km three times in 2004 in the process it set a variety of records including the highest flight of a private rocket at 300 km the flight ultimately failed as the second stage went into an oscillation that caused the engine to shut down prematurely but musk is confident that the most important objectives were achieved a successful first stage liftoff and flight second stage separation fairing separation second stage ignition and initial stable flight the live webcast was very impressive showing the whole flight from an onboard camera a trick even nasa only learned to do relatively recently i hope they post a copy of it on their website www spacex com posted by dlc 10 40 pm 2 comments monday march 19 spacex will be trying again after their first launch of the falcon 1 rocket went awry seconds after liftoff a year ago march 24 space exploration is about to try again this time they ve even got a live webcast covering the event it s at http spacex com webcast php unfortunately today s attempt was halted at t minus 1 minute 30 seconds and it s not clear what the cause was such things are normal and expected in the rocket biz especially with a brand new design nothing to worry about they ve scrubbed for today but they ve said they could reschedule for another try tomorrow or the day after kimbal musk brother of spacex founder and president elon musk keeps a nice firsthand blog on launch events from right there on kwajelein atoll in the pacific where these intial tests are being carried out see it here http kwajrockets blogspot com the operational launches will be from spaceports in the us here s a view of the pad from the live webcast posted by dlc 7 57 pm 0 comments monday september 18 amazing photo of shuttle and iss an amateur astronomer in france thierry legault took this amazing picture yesterday full size version here of the international space station and the space shuttle atlantis which had just separated from it in preparation for its return to earth legault managed to catch the pair just as they passed in front of the sun providing a stunningly clear silhouette that shows the newly installed solar panels on the iss legault has been taking amazing telescope pictures for years and has previously taken several shots of airplanes passing in front of the sun as well as of eclipses and other more usual astronomical subjects and has written a book in french about astrophotography he has a great collection of pictures on his own website thanks to spaceweather com a wonderful website where i first saw this photo posted by dlc 2 53 pm 5 comments tuesday august 29 pluto blues i just came across this new song about the iau decision last week to downgrade pluto from planet to dwarf planet it s called they demoted pluto and i think it s a remarkably well done and apt song my kudos to jimmy and the keyz at least people are talking passionately about a scientific sort of issue how often do you hear a catchy song with lines like this god i hate the iau they demoted pluto what s a guy like me to do they demoted pluto posted by dlc 2 24 pm 1 comments about me name dlc location massachusetts united states i ve always been interested in what goes on beyond the earth the planets around us and our ever expanding efforts to get to know them i ve been writing about such things for a long time in newspapers the boston globe for 20 years magazines new scientist wired atlantic smithsonian astronomy sky telescope and books life on mars 1979 now i m writing this blog too view my complete profile useful links spaceplaces new scientist s space channel latest on the mars rovers from jpl mars rover imagery viewer this is very cool jpl s page on the cassini mission at saturn the astrobiology institute at nasa the seti institute the search for extraterrestrial intelligence the planetary society mars daily space daily space review nasa watch virgin galactic the habitable zone space race news nasa watch blogs mars rover blog mars today martian soil mainly martian oliver morton s blog what on mars space tourism news the apollo era previous posts jwst s dazzling view of uranus curious about curiosity earthlings going to mars an...