Nasa CoLab recently hosted the twelfth Luna Philosophie salon, with guest Brian Day, Educational Technology Technical Lead at NASA Ames Research Center, who gave a great mission briefing on the coming LRO/LCROSS mission to search for water and landing sites for an antarctic station on the moon. NASA CoLab was set up to help build direct and open collaborations between the public, including mission briefings, data collaboration, great educational materials for kids and adults, and a host of other ways to interact, get involved, and get tremendous amounts of information on NASA missions. NASA has truly embraced the open-source culture and it’s great to see NASA CoLab working so well.
About LRO/LCROSS:
In 2009, NASA will return to the Moon with the combined launch of two robotic probes, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) and the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS). The two satellites will be launched together aboard an Atlas V rocket and these robotic missions are precursors to the planned establishment of a human outpost on the Moon. The LCROSS mission will use the Centaur upper stage of the launch vehicle as a kinetic impactor in the search for possible deposits of water ice that might occur in permanently-shadowed craters near the lunar pole. LRO will orbit the lunar poles for up to five years. Just after launch from the Kennedy Space Center, LRO will separate from LCROSS.
Another cool thing about Luna Philosophie (besides the cute host and the rest of the fun nerds like me who show up), is that it’s always held on (or close to) the full moon.
NASA’s TRMM spacecraft observed this view of Hurricane Gustav on August 27, 2008 as it attacked Haiti. At this time the storm was a category 1 hurricane with sustained winds of 65 knots (75 mph) and a pressure reading of 992 millibars. The cloud cover is taken by TRMM’s Visible and Infrared Scanner(VIRS) and the GOES spacecraft. The rain structure is taken by TRMM’s Tropical Microwave Imager (TMI) and TRMM’s Precitation Radar(PR) instruments. TRMM looks underneath of the storm’s clouds to reveal the underlying rain structure. Blue represents areas with at least 0.25 inches of rain per hour. Green shows at least 0.5 inches of rain per hour. Yellow is at least 1.0 inches of rain and red is at least 2.0 inches of rain per hour.
Made by the awesome nerds at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio (I wish I was one of them).
The Early Ammonia Servicer (EAS) is a 1400-lb., double-wide refrigerator-sized hunk o junk that was thrown overboard from the International Space Station on July 23, 2007. At the time, the castaway was in a high orbit and barely visible from Earth’s surface.
Not anymore: Twelve months later, with its orbit decaying, the EAS has become easy to see. The EAS is expected to reenter Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate near the end of 2008 or early 2009.
Until then you can see it, growing brighter as it descends, with your own eyes.
Check out Space Weather’s Simple Satellite Tracker
or see it live, as recorded on July 15, 2008 by kevin fetter, who employed a low-light video camera to film the EAS gliding over his home in Brockville, Ontario.
animation spans satellite images from june 23 through the 27th. includes the fires in northern california, meltwater along the nw coast (and possibly a phytoplankton bloom?), the puget sound and vancouver, bc.
Images courtesyMODISRapid Response Project at NASA/GSFC
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