Comments on: Radar love http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/ I am an astronomer, writer, and skeptic. I likes reality the way it is, and I aims to keep it that way. My real name is Phil Plait, and I run the Bad Astronomy blog. Sun, 08 Nov 2009 06:15:28 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 By: 2020 Hindsight » The Greatest Mission http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/comment-page-1/#comment-21093 2020 Hindsight » The Greatest Mission Thu, 28 Sep 2006 07:02:35 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/#comment-21093 [...] David Seal is guest-blogging at the Planetary Society Blog, and a coupla days ago he blogged about a mission close to my heart in the post entitled The Greatest Mission You’ve Never Heard About. [via Bad Astronomy] Except that readers of this blog have heard about it. A few times: The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (or SRTM). Or, how we mapped the world in 11 days from the space shuttle. [...] [...] David Seal is guest-blogging at the Planetary Society Blog, and a coupla days ago he blogged about a mission close to my heart in the post entitled The Greatest Mission You’ve Never Heard About. [via Bad Astronomy] Except that readers of this blog have heard about it. A few times: The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (or SRTM). Or, how we mapped the world in 11 days from the space shuttle. [...]

]]> By: Clive van der Spuy http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/comment-page-1/#comment-21092 Clive van der Spuy Wed, 27 Sep 2006 11:27:03 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/#comment-21092 Can anyone provide the scale? A very similar image is visually descernable at the Vredefort impact site (circa 2023 billion years). It is visable on google earth - look approx 50 to 70 kilometers South South-West of Johannesburg adjacent to Parys. The concentric rock formations in that case turned out not to be the edge of the crater but the remnants of the central dome left by rebound!! The edge of the crater is now visually invisable and had a diameter of hundreds (300 to 500?) kilometers. Can anyone provide the scale? A very similar image is visually descernable at the Vredefort impact site (circa 2023 billion years). It is visable on google earth – look approx 50 to 70 kilometers South South-West of Johannesburg adjacent to Parys. The concentric rock formations in that case turned out not to be the edge of the crater but the remnants of the central dome left by rebound!! The edge of the crater is now visually invisable and had a diameter of hundreds (300 to 500?) kilometers.

]]> By: Wayne http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/comment-page-1/#comment-21095 Wayne Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:53:34 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/#comment-21095 Map out the cenotes in the peninsula too. They follow an arc right along the arc shown in Phil's posted image. A good example here: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/SIC/impact_cratering/Chicxulub/gpcenotes.jpg Map out the cenotes in the peninsula too. They follow an arc right along the arc shown in Phil’s posted image.

A good example here: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/SIC/impact_cratering/Chicxulub/gpcenotes.jpg

]]> By: John B. Sandlin http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/comment-page-1/#comment-21096 John B. Sandlin Wed, 27 Sep 2006 00:39:37 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/#comment-21096 Judging from the image, the imact happened a bit out into the Gulf. Google Earth shows a small group of islands right about the point I'm guesstimating for the impact. Coincidence? Maybe. At the scale of the pictures compared to Google Earth, the islands would be just out of frame. jbs Judging from the image, the imact happened a bit out into the Gulf. Google Earth shows a small group of islands right about the point I’m guesstimating for the impact. Coincidence? Maybe. At the scale of the pictures compared to Google Earth, the islands would be just out of frame.

jbs

]]> By: Irishman http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/comment-page-1/#comment-21094 Irishman Tue, 26 Sep 2006 21:57:59 +0000 http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2006/09/26/radar-love/#comment-21094 I played a small role on SRTM. I got to fly out to ACE-Abel and view the mast canister and witness a full extension and retraction. I also visited JPL and saw the rest of the payload being processed. That was an incredible design criteria. Think about this - they had to accommodate the flexibility of the boom and the vaccillation at the end of that 60 m boom to allow for that fluctuation in the calculations. And then they performed a particular thrust maneuver from the Shuttle to snap the fluctuations out. Yes, that mission was a spectacular engineering and science achievement. I played a small role on SRTM. I got to fly out to ACE-Abel and view the mast canister and witness a full extension and retraction. I also visited JPL and saw the rest of the payload being processed. That was an incredible design criteria. Think about this – they had to accommodate the flexibility of the boom and the vaccillation at the end of that 60 m boom to allow for that fluctuation in the calculations. And then they performed a particular thrust maneuver from the Shuttle to snap the fluctuations out.

Yes, that mission was a spectacular engineering and science achievement.

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