New Satellites For Old!

Putting a satellite in orbit is massively expensive. Far from getting cheaper as the tech aged, the cost however still hovers around 10k for every pound launched. Estimates have it that there are roughly 300 billion dollars of hardware in geosynchronous orbits with a large portion of this total non functioning hardware.

DARPA is hoping to lower satellite cost significantly. How they plan to do that is elegant in it's simplicity. DARPA wants to harvest the dead hardware, which is more than likely 90% functional, for parts and build new satellites in place.

Here is what the Dvice article wrote:

• That 90% of stuff represents a lot of useful and expensive hardware. (the most useful) is the satellite's antenna, which represents the single biggest contributor to both functionality and launch cost. What DARPA wants to do is send a harvester satellite called Phoenix up to (harvest) things like antennas and solar panels from dead platforms and turn them into operational ... satellites. Tiny new controller modules called "satlets" will ride along with the harvester and be used to create new brains to get the ... parts all working together properly, effectively creating an entirely new satellite.

Now there is something I can get behind!

Complete article here

Movie of Martian Clouds from Phoenix Lander

Clouds scoot across the Martian sky in a movie clip consisting of 10 frames taken by the Surface Stereo Imager on NASA's Phoenix Mars Lander.

This clip accelerates the motion. The camera took these 10 frames over a 10-minute period from 2:52 p.m. to 3:02 p.m. local solar time at the Phoenix site during Sol 94 (Aug. 29), the 94th Martian day since landing.

<- movie ->

Something Weird going on with the Phoenix Lander

This is what I just read on the AstroEngine.com web page: Phoenix has found something more compelling than water - President Bush informed.

Damn! now that sounds very mysterious. However NASA scientists are quick to point out that t they have not discovered direct evidence for life on Mars. But something is going on and it's important enough that NASA and the University of Arizona are going to great lengths to keep the details out of the public domain!
The official line is: the Phoenix team need more time to analyze the complex data they’ve received and will wait till mid-August at the earliest to make a press release.

The release in Universe Today is a bit more forthcoming: new data appears to indicate the "potential for life"

But the 800 lb. gorilla here is that this is all good and fine, and very exciting, but since when does that instantly rate informing the leader of the free world?

<- UPDATE NASA say Mars environment could support extreme lifeforms ->

The Mars Phoenix lander brought Science Fiction audio to Mars

Sometimes I am bit slow to the mark. Here is an example. I was looking at pics from the Phoenix lander and saw what appeared to be a CD on the deck of the robot. Never gave it much thought until I was reading Jesse's SFFAudio blog and found that the disk is full of audio from Earth. Here is a partial listing:

Carl Sagan audio

Arthur C. Clarke audio

War of the Worlds The 1938 radio drama.

Wells and Welles - A 1940 non-fiction radio piece in which H.G. Wells and Orson Welles met to discuss War of the Worlds.

The Viking Landings : Jon Lomberg’s report on the Viking landing on Mars, July 20, 1976. Includes live recordings from mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and interviews with science fiction writers and actors.

By the way, the DVD is made of a silica glass (instead of regular plastic) so as to withstand long-term exposure on the Martian surface. Now all those Martians will need is a DVD player.

Thanks Jesse!

Countdown to Phoenix landing with Canadian weather station

The Maple Leaf Alights on Mars - Phoenix Lander on the Red Planet

Sunday, May 25, 2008 The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) is hosting a media gathering at its space base in Saint Hubert, Quebec to celebrate the arrival of the Phoenix Lander on Mars. En Francais

The party in St Hubert starts at 7:30 pm EDT with a presentation and talk by Steve MacLean, CSA Chief Astronaut. Thanks to the live feed from Mission Control at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Arizona, participants in the CSA event will join millions worldwide watching the landing of this tough little scrapper of a lander.

Once grounded. Phoenix will deploy a Canadian weather station to record the daily weather of the Martian northern plains; its temperature, wind and barometric pressure and more .

Following the landing event, St Hubert attendees will view Mars from CSA's observatory. Information on the Phoenix Mission is available on the CSA Web site at www.space.gc.ca. Image courtesy University of the West of England

The Man Who Popularized Mars

Shaun Saunders sends in a well written article that juxtapositions the upcoming NASA Phoenix mission with the efforts of astronomer Percival Lowell. While Phoenix ( which is to land on Mars AT 7:36 P.M. ON May 25) will explore Mar's northern polar ice-cap looking for signs of life, Lowell, observing Mars, was convinced that he saw signs of intelligent activity covering the complete surface of the planet.

From the Boston.com article which highlights Lowell's career:

Long before NASA was established in 1958, before JFK's impassioned speech about the space race, and before any of the Apollo missions or space shuttle successes and disasters, Percival Lowell devoted much of his career and considerable fortune to trying to prove that Mars hosted intelligent life.

Click here for complete article

Photo from the Lowell Observatory Archive