I have a new piece up on this week’s non-discovery of water on Mars.
Category Archives: Space Science
Overhype?
Is this really as big a deal as NASA is making of it?
Data from recent missions to Mars has been building toward a confirmation of the presence of water ice. However, “this would be the first time we held it in our hands, so to speak,” says Bryan DeBates, a senior aerospace education specialist at the Space Foundation. Evidence from other locations in the solar system, including Earth’s moon, Saturn’s Enceladus moon and Jupiter’s Europa moon, have strongly hinted at the presence of water–NASA confirmed a liquid lake on Saturn’s Titan moon on Wednesday–but no direct observation of water has been made.
Haven’t we been pretty certain for years that there was ice on Mars (and outer planet moons, and comets)? What’s the big deal here? If there’s a story at all, it seems to me that it’s about the amount of water available, not the fact that we have “direct confirmation.”
Smart Robotic Space Explorers
This is the future of space exploration. Which is why we have to stop talking about “exploration” as a justification for humans in space.
[Update in the evening]
Commenter Paul Dietz recommends >Saturn’s Children
Space Carnival Time
Now with 43% more Tonguska.
Blogtalking Space
Sorry I didn’t mention it yesterday so you could listen live, but hey, the ability to download and listen at your own convenience is one of the features of the Interweb. Last night I did a one-hour interview with Rick Moran on space stuff. Download it here.
Good Spacy Linkage
Over at the latest Carnival of Space.
GLAST Headed To Orbit
It looks like Boeing had a successful Delta 2 launch (delayed by twenty minutes) today. I guess that since it doesn’t need any specific orbit, as is needed for an ISS launch, there was no critical launch window. I went outside to watch, but as usual, saw nothing. The only launch I’ve ever seen from the house is a Atlas night launch.
Carnival Of Phoenix
Well, it’s actually the latest Carnival of Space, over at the Lifeboat Foundation, but it’s pretty Phoenix-centric.
Phoenix Descending
I have some thoughts on this weekend’s successful arean invasion, over at PJ Media.
[Update at 7:40 AM EDT]
Some less lofty thoughts over at Althouse’s place, particularly in comments.
[Mid-morning update]
Jeff Foust writes about a second chance for an underdog, over at The Space Review.
The Cosmic Ghoul Missed One
Congrats to JPL on the successful (so far) landing of the Phoenix. Interestingly (though almost certainly coincidentally), it happens on the forty-seventh anniversary of Kennedy’s speech announcing the plan to land a man on the moon by the end of the decade.
And (for what it’s worth–not much, to me, and even more certainly coincidentally) it’s the thirty-first anniversary of the initial release of Star Wars in theaters. I didn’t see it that day, but I did see it within a couple weeks. I remember being unimpressed (“the Kessel run in twelve parsecs”…please), though the effects were pretty good. But then, I was a fan of actual science fiction.
[Update late evening]
It’s worth noting that (I think) this was the first soft landing on Mars in over twenty years, since Viking. Surely someone will correct me (or nitpick me) if I’m wrong.
[Monday morning update]
OK, not exactly wrong (it has been over twenty years), but it’s thirty years. I’m pretty good at math. Arithmetic, not so much.