A few things to tide you over for the weekend:
1) The Indian lunar probe Chandrayaan-1 is getting ready for launch on October 22. It is equipped with a fleet of instruments to map out the geological history the Moon, and its low orbit will mean high-quality data. That in turn will be very useful when it comes time to put more footprints on the dusty regolith.
2) The Stardust capsule which fell to Earth containing bits of cometary material will be put on display at the Smithsonian. That’s awesome. The Faint Object Spectrograph, a Hubble instrument I worked with for my PhD, is there at the National Air and Space Museum as well. I love that they’re collecting important bits of space science history like this.
3) The current Carnival of Space is being hosted by my e-friend (though we’ve met, briefly, IRL) Jennifer Ouellette at Twisted Physics. It’s a good batch this week; I even learned of a new astroblog called Simostronomy, where amateur Mike Simonsen tells observing stories. This week it’s animals encountered while observing. I have a bunch of those stories myself. I’ll have to share them sometime.
4) Speaking of space, China just launched three taikonauts into space, and has completed the country’s first space walk. I’m glad to see other folks joining in the fun. And while I don’t think we need another space race — that tends to focus people on short sighted splashy goals rather then long-term occupation of space — I hope it does light some sort of fire under other countries. The more the merrier… as long as it’s done correctly.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:07 am
My garden if stuffed with wildlife (it’s minimal gardening that does it) I regularly get joined in my observing sessions by bats, frogs, hedgehogs and even a badger on one memorable night. I also have an owl that sits in my Poplar tree and hoots at me every time I am at my scope. I often wonder what they make of it all.
September 27th, 2008 at 9:18 am
China.org has some beautifull videos linked:
http://www.china.org.cn/
Imagine all the Chinese kids getting all fired up about the mission and turning on to science.
Congratulations to Zhai Zhigang, his fellow taikonauts and everyone who helped get them up there.
BigBob
September 27th, 2008 at 9:39 am
That space walk was faked! No stars in the background….
.
.
.
.
.
.
erm, I should probably end this with a smiley
September 27th, 2008 at 10:20 am
That in turn will be very useful when it comes time to put more footprints on the dusty regolith.
Hopefully, the next administration will get smart and deemphasize the manned space program as strongly recommended by Bob Park and Steven Weinberg, who, of course, don’t know that they are talking about.
September 27th, 2008 at 10:27 am
Just to rattle Dr. Plaits’ cage a little, attached is a comment from the aforementioned Bob Park on the subject of the Chinese launch.
3. SHENZHOU: A MODEST SPACE PROPOSAL.
In a perfect launch Thursday night, China sent three taikonauts on a mission that will include China’s first spacewalk. Their next goal is a space station. As in Apollo, the primary objective is political; they aim to reach the Moon before the US can return. But China also attaches great importance to space exploration for military and commercial purposes.While the benefits of a space program are undeniable, there is no evidence that dragging Homo sapiens along has been anything but a burden to the first two space-faring nations. I therefore propose once again that in the interests of world peace we simply give the ISS to China. Let China pay the space station bills. After all, every Yuan spent in space is a Yuan not spent on earthly adventures.
September 27th, 2008 at 11:42 am
First Chinese space walk, eh? Did they bring a broom and scoop to clean up the space rubbish they created when they blew up that satellite with a missile, back in January 2007?
September 27th, 2008 at 12:08 pm
I love Bob Park’s weekly newsletter and his books but unfortunately he has a blind side when it comes to manned space flight. He is probably right about the ISS and the Shuttle and almost certainly a number of things could be handled robotically. That isn’t the point. Some of the reasons we should go into to space are more intangible and go to the core of being human and our need to explore and experience than a few remote control experiments satisfy.
September 27th, 2008 at 12:33 pm
“Some of the reasons we should go into to space are more intangible… ”
Yeah, like getting away from all the nutjobs on Earth.
September 27th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Re shane
Does Steven Weinberg also have a blind side?
September 27th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Actually, I think both Weinberg and Park are dead wrong about manned spaceflight. I’ve written about this many times on the blog.
September 27th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
[woo]
Obviously that spacewalk was faked. Did you see that guy waving that flag? Flags can’t wave in space!!!! Everybody knows that.
[/woo]
…Was this the first time somebody waved a flag in space on video? That was pretty cool.
September 27th, 2008 at 2:35 pm
The problem with sending humans into space is that it is confused with science, when it is principally an engineering exercise. Virtually all of our body of science from space has been accomplished by our robotic representatives.
Nothing wrong with engineering successes, but I hate to see it called science and have it compete for science dollars. Does anyone doubt that our scientific knowledge of space would be far greater if the money spent on the manned space program had gone into robotic exploration, etc?
So let’s call the manned space program an engineering and national pride thing and leave the science to the robots, who have proven to be unarguably much, much better at it.
September 27th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
I wonder if the two microchips containing more than a million names are still fixed to the Stardust probe. If so, my name will soon be on display at the Smithsonian. Which is actually pretty cool…
September 27th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
* Congrats. a small step but a big leap for China.
* You need a lot of technologies to support the space program, esp. US and the west deny the dual use technologies.
* There are military uses for sure. Better missiles… China can shoot down all the GPS satellites except theirs, so they can control Taiwan without US missile interferences. However, from the last 50 years of history, how many times China sent soldiers outside their border vs US?
* China is not invited to ISS due to human right issues. There is none if you compare China 30 years ago and China today. Now they can feed their huge population, cloth them…You’re influenced by the news media and politicians to bash China and establish a common enemy.
September 28th, 2008 at 11:47 am
No, the story you NEED to tell is the one you told me several years back of *the glowing door*!!!
Well, that’s the title I would give it anyway. If you don’t remember which story that was, you told it during a conversation with me in which we were discussing how when you’re working by yourself late at night you’ll sometimes get the feeling someone’s in the dome with you. And that’s a feeling that doesn’t just go away on its own — you have to investigate. I talked about how I knew when I got that feeling that my night was pretty much over and I would just go home. Then you told this hilarious tale about grabbing a roommate’s book and rushing out to the observatory…
September 29th, 2008 at 6:51 am
I wonder if a new space race might not be a good thing. Certainly NASA saw it’s period of greatest ambition and public enthusiasm as a direct result of our space race with the Soviets. A similar race with China might be to our benefit. On the other hand, we’re not really that sure we’d win such a race.
September 29th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Heh, that’s cool. One of the nicknames I use is ‘Astroquicky’
.
September 29th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
“China just launched three taikonauts into space, and has completed the country’s first space walk”
Firefly may very well come true
Dong-ma? 