Image from the ArsTechnica article

I know its a couple days off, but I really thought that people who were into science, history and space exploration would enjoy reading this piece by Lee Hutchinson.

On July 20, 1969, at about four minutes before 10:00pm Central Daylight Time, former naval aviator and test pilot Neil Armstrong became the first human being to stand on the surface of the Moon. About 20 minutes later, he was followed by Buzz Aldrin, an Air Force colonel with a PhD in astronautics from MIT (Aldrin had, quite literally, written the book on orbital rendezvous techniques). Armstrong and Aldrin’s landing was the culmination of almost a decade of scientific and engineering work by hundreds of thousands of people across the United States. Even though the lunar program’s goals were ultimately political, the Apollo project ranks as one of the greatest engineering achievements in human history.

The six successful Apollo landings between 1969 and 1972 still inspire awe today, almost half a century later. A big part of that awe comes from the fact that those voyages from the Earth to the Moon were accomplished with only the most basic of computing assistance. There were no supercomputers as we’d understand them today; although the computers that eventually powered the Apollo spacecraft were almost unbelievably advanced at the time, they are alarmingly primitive when viewed through the lens of 21st century computing.

Read more at ArsTechnica

NASA has released a spectacular new video depicting the collision of two neutron stars and resulting in the creation of a black hole. Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center created the animation using a supercomputer.

A super-dense neutron star is one of the leftover remnants of the death of a much larger star—up to 30 times the size of the sun—that has died in a supernova event. According to NASA, a neutron star has a mass equal to 1.5 times the mass of the sun compressed into a ball about 12 miles (20 kilometers) across. Incredibly, one cubic centimeter of a neutron star would outweigh Mount Everest.

More: Amazing NASA Video Shows Two Neutron Stars Colliding to Form a Black Hole

The video is not embed-able so here is the direct link - well worth a watch:

space.com

Neutron Stars Tear Each Other To Shreds, Black Hole Ensues | Visualization
In this simulation, 2 neutron stars weigh in at 1.4 and 1.7 solar masses and are separated by only 11 miles. Intense tidal forces pull the stars apart as they spiral towards each other and the black hole is formed amidst the chaos.

This could be potentaily the first world we have found besides Earth that actually has Life on it. Than again, we can’t be sure yet, so don’t get your hopes up. Adam Mann reports,

An artist conception of what the system around Kepler-186f could look like. Image: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

Astronomers are one step closer to discovering Earth Two. They have found an exoplanet slightly larger than our own, orbiting a star at a distance where it could have liquid water on its surface.

But before you hop on a spaceship looking for a change of scenery, keep in mind that scientists have fairly little information about this new exoplanet, including its mass and composition. From what they can tell, the place is similar to our own world, though not quite Earth’s twin.

“We consider it more of an Earth cousin,” said astronomer Elisa Quintana of NASA’s Ames Research Center, lead author of a paper about the finding appearing today in Science. “It’s got the same size and characteristics, but a very different parent star.”

The exoplanet, named Kepler-186f, is located nearly 500 light-years away, orbiting a red M dwarf star. The star is about half the size of our own yellow G-type sun, and is much cooler and dimmer. Kepler-186f is roughly 10 percent larger than Earth and travels around its parent star in 130 days. Four other planets, each slightly larger than the Earth, also orbit the star, all with periods less than 23 days.

Read more at Wired

NASA is suspending most of its cooperation with Russia as a result of the ongoing situation in Ukraine, agency officials announced Wednesday afternoon (April 2).

“Given Russia’s ongoing violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, NASA is suspending the majority of its ongoing engagements with the Russian Federation,” officials said in a statement. “NASA and Roscosmos will, however, continue to work together to maintain safe and continuous operation of the International Space Station.”

The news first broke Wednesday in the form of a leaked NASA memo posted online by spaceref.com.

Read more at Space.com

Donald Trump - Photo via en.wikipedia.org

Emil Karlsson over at his website, Debunking Denialism, exposes one of America’s wealthiest wingnuts, and shows us just how uneducated you would have to be, to actually find his “scientific” arguments compelling.
Oh by the way, its not just climate change where Trump shows us his ignorance. Maybe Trump should have spent a bit more of his money on getting a better science education.

Donald Trump does not understand climate change

One of the most basic distinctions in climate science is the difference between weather and climate. Weather is the instantaneous atmospheric conditions, such as rainy, snowy, sunny and so on. Climate, on the other hand, is about long-term trends. Confusing weather with climate, claiming that we cannot predict climate because we cannot predict weather, or trying to argue against the existence of human-influenced climate change by referencing current weather events is one of the most common tactic used by climate change denier.

Contrary to Trump, the existence of local anomalies does not refute a general trend. More about the difference of weather and climate can be found on the NASA website.

Read more at Debunking Denialism

Research by NASA has shown that amateurs are as good as professionals when comes to finding craters on the Moon. A recent study confirmed that craters on the Moon, among other worlds, could be mapped reliably by amateurs. This finding could lead to new opportunities for amateur scientists who want to help astronomers.

A recent study by University of Colorado-Boulder researchers tested the ability of volunteers to find craters on the Moon. The volunteer work was compared to professional analysis by scientists with up to 50 years of experience. The study showed that amateur counters are just as good as professionals at identifying craters in photographs.

More: Moon Craters Mapped by Amateurs

by Liat Clark

C. Pulliam & D. Aguilar (CfA)

Nasa has launched a new Zooniverse citizen science project to get you hunting for extrasolar dusty disks, planetary precursors, among 500,000 unidentified objects in the sky.

Disk Detective features images captured by the space agency’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (Wise), which between 2010 and 2011 captured one of the most detailed views of the Universe in infrared in four different wavelengths. The team at the Goddard Space Flight Center wants to use this data to get the public to identify the early beginnings of planets.

Read more at Ars Technica

Anyone still not convinced?

NASA has released a new visualization showing how global temperatures have risen since 1950. It’s pretty much what you’d expect given that the level of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere is currently higher than at any time in the last 800,000 years.

This visualization was put together by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). The group, which analyzes global surface temperatures on an ongoing basis, just released a rather sobering report on temperatures around the globe in 2013.

NASA says 2013 is now tied with 2009 and 2006 for the seventh warmest year since 1880. So, discounting 1998, the ten warmest years in the 134-year record have all occurred since 2000, with 2010 and 2005 ranking as the warmest years on record.

Video

More: Watch 60 Years of Global Warming in 15 Seconds

This artist’s concept shows what the weather might look like on cool star-like bodies known as brown dwarfs. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Western Ontario/Stony Brook U
Full image and caption

Swirling, stormy clouds may be ever-present on cool celestial orbs called brown dwarfs. New observations from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope suggest that most brown dwarfs are roiling with one or more planet-size storms akin to Jupiter’s “Great Red Spot.”

“As the brown dwarfs spin on their axis, the alternation of what we think are cloud-free and cloudy regions produces a periodic brightness variation that we can observe,” said Stanimir Metchev of the University of Western Ontario, Canada. “These are signs of patchiness in the cloud cover.”

Read more at NASA.gov

The vintage Super Guppy aircraft is quite a story in and of itself.

NASA’s Orion spacecraft is just about ready to turn up the heat. The spacecraft’s heat shield arrived at the agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida Wednesday night aboard the agency’s Super Guppy aircraft.

The heat shield, the largest of its kind ever built, is to be unloaded Thursday and is scheduled for installation on the Orion crew module in March, in preparation for Orion’s first flight test in September 2014.

The heat shield completion and delivery to Kennedy, where Orion is being prepared, is a major step toward Exploration Flight Test-1 next year,” said Dan Dumbacher, NASA’s deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development in Washington. “Sending Orion into space for the first time is going to give us crucial data to improve our design decisions and develop Orion to send humans on future missions to an asteroid and Mars.”

More: Heat Shield for NASA’s Orion Spacecraft Arrives at Kennedy Space Center