DNA Proves Illegitimacy, A Family Portrait

Play Dead Rover

Spirit rover is stuck in the Martian dirt:

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090512-spirit-stuck.html

Well! Duh! you'd be stuck too if a Martian was beating on you.

Roll Over Rover

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit is back in working order, sort of. The robotic rover crawled last week for the first time in two weeks after its recent struggle with amnesia and rebooting. It plodded 5.6 feet toward its goal of about 500 feet away.

Three times in the past two weeks, Spirit has failed to record data from a day's activity period into 128 megabytes of flash memory, (why so small, I carry a 1 gig in my pocket). That is where information is preserved even when power is off, such as when the rover naps to conserve power.

Spirit has also suffered from failing to wake up for three consecutive communication sessions (I have the same problem). Engineers have not found any links among the three types of events.

Spirit was given commands from NASA engineers who are still investigating the cause behind its recent glitches. The rover has moved its high-gain dish antenna and its camera mast, diagnostic activities used to check for any mechanical problems. Both components may be related to the reboots, the amnesia events, or the failure to wake up for three consecutive communication sessions weeks ago.

Spirit's daily routine was changed in order to assist the diagnostic work if the rover experiences another failure to record data into flash memory.

To conserve energy, Spirit has typically included a nap between its main activities for the day and the day's main downlink transmission of data to Earth. Data stored only in the rover's random-access memory (RAM), instead of in flash memory, is lost during the nap, so when Spirit has flash amnesia on that schedule, Spirit gives up no data from the activity interval. The new schedule puts the nap before the activity period (you couldn’t do that to kids). Even if there is a flash amnesia event, data from the activity would likely be available from RAM during the downlink.

On the other side of Mars, Opportunity completed a drive of more than 1000 feet in the last week in its long distance trek toward a crater more than 20 times larger than the biggest it has visited so far.

Spirit, and its twin Opportunity, finished their three-month prime mission on Mars five years ago and have kept operating through multiple mission extensions. They have already operated more than 20 times longer than their original primary task on Mars.

And Now I Shaw Take Over the Word

North Korea thumbed their nose at the United States, Japan, South Korea and a plethora of United Nations resolutions, by launching a rocket on Sunday 10:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. North Korea said the Taepodong-2 was designed to hurl a satellite into space. The world views it as an effort to substantiate that NK can launch a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile.

The first stage fell into the Sea of Japan and the second stage into the Pacific. The third stage was most likely a big Fail. The North Korean satellite is now in a subaquatic orbit in the Pacific Ocean :)

Kim Jong-il should not be underestimated though. North Korea’s missiles marketed in the international black market, are one of its few profitable exports. Iran, Syria, Pakistan and maybe even terrorists, have all been among North Korea's leading customers, not to mention the possibility of nuclear weapon propagation.

Kind of creepy and reminds me of the sci-fi movie ‘Battle Beneath the Earth’ (1967). Rogue communist leaders use digging machines under major US cities where they plan to detonate nuclear bombs.

Asteroid to Strike Bay Area

University of Raleigh-Orlando FL- Asteroid AF-60012, due to strike the earth Wednesday somewhere near the San Francisco Bay area at about 4:30PM Pacific time. The asteroid measuring approximately 22 meters along its long axis, will have catastrophic results say astronomers at the UR Dome 2 Observatory. If the asteroid hits land, it will leave a crater as big as a football stadium. If it hits water, the resulting tsunami could be as high as 40 meters, causing much damage in the coastal regions. Citizens are urged to spend the day in fallout shelters on high ground or leave the area. It may strike hard enough to cause a chain reaction on the San Andreas fault line resulting in earthquakes along a 200-mile stretch.
“If you’re lucky enough to survive the impact and the tsunami, you may not survive the resulting earthquake,” stated Dr. Dumas of the observatory.
Dr. Dumas was asked if the asteroid might break up upon entering the atmosphere. “Not very likely, as this is one of the most dense asteroids in the solar system.”
Further details are forth coming.

One Man's Trash is Another Man's Trash

Space News
The crew of the space station had to take shelter in the emergency Soyuz TMA-13 lifeboat spacecraft to duck from a piece of trash. The piece, as big around as your baby finger was part of a spent motor used to send satellites into a higher geosynchronous orbit. It's only going to get worse as old space junk and new junk from the recent satellite collision spreads all around.

Virgin Galactic has been making test flights of their WhiteKnightTwo mothership, which will take SpaceShipTwo to a high altitude, where they will separate and SpaceShipTwo will go even higher to a suborbital altitude. There are so many people wanting to go into space that if they could only turn an economy flight into a garbage collection run. Imagine paying to ride the back of the garbage truck.

Discovery
The Discovery space shuttle was delayed again, new date of launch is set for March 15. The shuttle has a badly needed part for the station urine recycler which keeps breaking. You don't suppose that one of the crew members is sabotaging it on purpose. A future French astronaut was quoted as saying, "I bring my own Perrier.” I am reminded of the movie 'Dark Star' where all the recycled food started tasting like chicken salad sandwich.

Satellite My Fire

The Kepler space telescope mission was finally launched on March 6, 2009, which had been delayed for more than two years. It is designed to search for earth-like planets in other solar systems with its giant digital camera, which also measures intensity of light and can detect a shadow from an earth sized planet passing in front of another star. Unlike most satellites which orbit around the earth, it will orbit in a solar orbit lagging 950 miles behind the earth.

North Korea is slated to launch a satellite sometime near the ides of March or in April for Kim's birthday, a direct violation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718. I knew that cockroach would try to get back in space.

Iran launched its second satellite on February 2, 2009, the Omid communications satellite, which consisted of a walkie-talkie and a set of bongo drums wired directly to a 60's decoder ring.

Meanwhile, the Chinese crashed one of their satellites on the surface of the moon, claiming to get experience in lunar landings. Chinese astronauts have also been going through drop conditioning at higher and higher heights.

India has also entered the space race with a few of their own satellites, one of which is orbiting the moon.

There is even a rumor of Jamaica putting up their own satellite with magnificent dreadlocks dangling from the heavens. Yeah mon.