News Round Up

At the top of this week's news is the safe return of Discovery earlier this evening. In other NASA news, it's not too late to vote for the name of the next Mars rover. After recent naming poll incidents, NASA has been clear that is a "non-binding poll." You can also send your name to Mars aboard that same spacecraft.


Universe Today announced this week its participation in "Live Telescope," which is pretty much what it sounds like. The Northern and Southern Galactic and Warren Rupp Observatory in Central Victoria, Australia, will broadcast a view through their telescope via webcast. At around 9:00 UT (which is nighttime there), they will start webcasting the view through their video eyepiece, and they won't stop until morning. Recent targets include the Jewel Box Cluster, Alpha Centauri, M11 and Alpha Crucis. You can tune in by visiting Universe Today.
And finally, to all the die hards out there (you know who you are!), I wish you a happy Messier Marathon! Too bad it's completely socked in here.

New News This Week

In this week's space science news, NASA announced a new launch date for the shuttle, pending safety approval on hydrogen flow control valves. The tentative date is March 12. They have also named a chair of the investigation committee for the failed launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory.
Anticipation is building for the March 6 launch of the Kepler spacecraft. You'll be hearing lots more about this one next week because I'm very excited about it, but in a sentence, it's a spacecraft designed to look for Earth-like planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has gone into safe mode after the automated safety response registered an anomalous event. Some conjectures as to the event include cosmic rays hitting the electronics panel. In the meantime, it continues to function and engineers hope to have it functioning normally again by early next week.
The Chandra X-ray Observatory has found the oldest pulsar ever observed. Despite its age (about 200 million years old), it's surprisingly active. It's also one of the nearest pulsars to us, at a mere 770 light years from Earth.
Finally, we'll end with the most controversial story of the week, the inclusion of $2 million for "the promotion of astronomy" in Hawaii at the Imiloa Science Center as part of the Omnibus spending bill. While certainly not one of the bigger ticket items, conservatives like John McCain have criticized this as pork. In fact, Sen. McCain went as far as to label it the #2 Porkiest Porkiest Project in a recent tweet. He says, "...because nothing says new jobs for average Americans like investing in astronomy." This isn't the first time McCain has expressed displeasure at spending in astronomical arenas. Towards the end of his campaign, he made frequent disparaging remarks about then-Senator Obama's proposed $3 million for renovations at America's first planetarium, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago; unfortunately, McCain repeatedly referred the the planetarium as an "overhead projector." The astronomy community is once again abuzz with discussion of the importance (or lack thereof) of astronomy education in our country.

More Questions and an Announcement

Bob in Goleta, CA asks: "What is happening with the rover today? What are the people in the space shuttle doing? What is the recent dust storm on Mars doing to the solar system?"
Great questions, Bob! I'm so glad you asked, because your timely questions bring me to my announcement: today is the official kick-off of my weekly news round up. In an effort to make sure you at least see a headline and know where to get more info on some of the top happenings of the week, I'm going to post a round up of all the cool stuff you might have accidentally missed. And I promise that this week's edition will answer your questions, Bob.
Let's start with the rovers. Spirit recently got a quick cleaning from a two recent dust storms that reduced the amount of dust on the solar panels significantly. Interestingly, when the rovers arrived, engineers from JPL were concerned that Mars' frequent and intense dust storms would cake the solar panels with dust and reduce their battery life; however, just the opposite has been true - the dust storms have repeatedly given the rovers new life as they've swept away some of the layers of dirt from the panels. Opportunity is also doing well; its right front wheel has had some issues for over three years, and recent diagnostic mobility drives have kept Opportunity and JPL engineers busy analyzing the degree of damage. Status reports for both rovers are updated weekly here.
In shuttle news, the launch of STS-119 (the next shuttle launch) has been deferred. Because of damage to a flow control valve that occurred during Endeavor's Nov. 2008 flight, NASA officials have decided that further investigation is needed before setting a launch date. STS-119 will carry a truss for the ISS as well as a new crew member to the space station. More info here. There are no current shuttle missions at this time.
In astronomical headlines, NASA's Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope (formerly known as GLAST) saw the largest gamma-ray burst ever recorded, and it saw it in hi-res. Gamma rays can be ejected from dying stars as they collapse and form black holes, sending huge amounts of energy into space travelling at nearly the speed of light. These bursts can be up to 5 billion times as energetic as visible light. While the processes that produce these gamma ray bursts aren't well understood, the Fermi telescope is helping scientists learn more by studying wavelengths of light not visible to the human eye. For more info, see the press release here.
And finally, NASA wants you to help name the new node on the International Space Station. Nodes 1 and 2 are named Harmony and Unity respectively, and submissions for the name of the new node will be accepted here. The winning name will be announced on April 28th. No prizes for picking the winning name, just the satisfaction of knowing you are awesome.