Tag Archives: Nasa

New Map Shows Air Pollution Throughout the World

Image via NASA Scientists have long known about the life-threatening impact of air pollution — but up until now, tracking it globally with any accuracy had been out of reach. With new satellite-based imaging, however, researchers are getting their first peek at how particulate matter is distributed around the world, and in places where air pollution had been difficult to measure with any accuracy before — an important step towards … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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New Map Shows Air Pollution Throughout the World

The Science of G Force

TONIGHT 8:30/7:30c What are G forces capable of? From a NASA research facility to a flight in a stunt plane, one man finds out.

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The Science of G Force

Got a plan to get us back to the Moon? NASA’s got $30 million worth of motivation!

In the clearest indication yet that the future of space exploration lies as much in the private sector as government agencies, NASA announced it's offering $30.1 million for the first commercial group to land a probe on the Moon. Specifically, NASA says it will buy data from whoever can successfully design a lunar rover and actually get it to the Moon. This basically doubles Google's Lunar X prize, which offers 30 million to the first successful commercial moonshot. This is a huge boon to the 21 different developers gunning for the Google prize, because many had already incorporated data purchases from organizations like NASA into their business model, and the chance of a 60.1 million dollar payday should provide ample incentive for one of the companies to succeed. In a press release, the space agency explained just what it's looking for: [NASA] challenges industry to demonstrate Earth-to-lunar surface flight system capabilities and test technologies. Data provided to NASA should include information related to landing using a human mission profile; identification of hazards during landing; precision landing; and imagery and long-duration surface operations. [NASA] asks for information about the design and demonstration of an end-to-end lunar landing mission. This includes data associated with hardware design, development and testing; ground operations and integration; launch; trajectory correction maneuvers; lunar braking, burn and landing; and enhanced capabilities. This is potentially a big win-win for NASA, as it can help support the advancement of space travel while still only spending a fraction of the money it would take to send one of its own probes to the Moon. Like the Lunar X prize, there is a time limit on the prize – companies only have until 2012 to collect the full 60.1 million, after which both the Google and NASA sides of the prize shrink. After that, NASA says it will offer up to 15 million for data until 2014, and if nobody has claimed the money by then, the offer expires. Also, for any enterprising readers feeling like making a late entry, be warned – the deadline for proposals is September 8. http://io9.com/5607572/got-a-plan-to-get-us-back-to-the-moon-nasas-got-30-millio… added by: pjacobs51

Is Denver Post Columnist Littwin Completely Ignorant of Charles Bolden Controversy?

In this morning’s Denver Post, Mike Littwin manages to display simultaneously the insularity and smugness of the One Party media , as well as one of the last tools left in the left’s rather empty playbook. Apparently, during a Senate debate at Channel 12, Jane Norton said, “We need a NASA budget that doesn’t cater to making Muslims feel good but that is strong on science …” This scandalized Littwin, who assumed it was a cheap shot at Muslims. Evidently, he hadn’t seen the video of NASA head Charles Bolden that’s been making the rounds on the conservative and libertarian blogosphere: Remarkably, instead of conceding that we’re paying all those scientists, engineers, and bureaucrats to actually achieve, or at least facilitate achievement, in space, Littwin uses his and the rest of the MSM reporters’ ignorance of the interview as evidence that the argument was out of place, and then goes straight for the race card: When I read the stories, I remembered hearing something about it. But when I showed Norton’s quote to several people up on the news — but not necessarily up on Fox News — they each registered a blank. That suggests something we already knew: that we get our news these days from different places. What it doesn’t tell us, though, is why Norton thought the story was worth mentioning at all. Presumably Norton meant to say “Muslim countries” rather than all “Muslims,” including those who might live, say, next door. I guess that’s still up for debate. For the record, I’m as proud as anyone of Ilan Ramon, but his presence on the shuttle should have been incidental to its mission, not actually its mission.  Also for the record, I’m with Bill Whittle when he lauds NASA’s retreat to make room for a more sustainable private space program. A few years ago, at an LPR session, Littwin told me that reporters were well aware of the blogosphere, that they spent tons of time reading blogs in an effort to understand this new media.  Seems they manage to miss HotAir, Powerline, Pajamas Media, Instapundit. The line of argument, to the extent that there is one, is that since Littwin hadn’t seen the video, Norton may be a bigot.  In a year when the left’s traditional arguments appear to have run out of steam, there’s one they think they can reliably return to, time and again.  The JournoList extracts over at Daily Caller indicate the power that the accusation of racism once had, and that the left still thinks it has.  But with the country having elected a black president, answering a cry of “read the Constitution” with “you must be racist” is increasing falling on deaf ears. Those who thought that Obama’s presidency might herald a post-racial era may yet be right.  Just not exactly how they thought.

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Is Denver Post Columnist Littwin Completely Ignorant of Charles Bolden Controversy?

NASA Creates World’s First Global Forest Map Using Lasers

Scientists, using three NASA satellites, have created a first-of-its-kind map that details the height of the world’s forests. The data was collected from NASA’s ICESat, Terra and Aqua satellites. The latter two satellites are responsible for most of NASA’s Gulf spill imagery. The data collected will help scientists understand how the world’s forests both store and process carbon. While there are many local and regional canopy maps, this is the very first global map using a uniform method for measure. … Read the full story on TreeHugger

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NASA Creates World’s First Global Forest Map Using Lasers

WaPo Finally Runs Story on NASA Administrator Bolden: Eight Paragraphs On Page A13

In a June 30 interview with “Talk to Al Jazeera,” NASA administrator Charles Bolden revealed that President Obama had tasked him with “find[ing] a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” The media largely ignored the story, with a few exceptions, such as Fox News contributor Charles Krauthammer .  Among the media outlets that blacked out the controversy was the Washington Post, which didn’t cover the Bolden controversy until today. Even then, the paper printed on page A13 a brief 8-paragraph item by the Reuters news wire : White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Monday that NASA administrator Charles F. Bolden Jr. was wrong to say that reaching out to the Muslim world was a top priority of the U.S. space agency. Bolden raised eyebrows in the space community and outrage among conservative pundits by telling al-Jazeera television recently that President Barack Obama had instructed him to work for better outreach with the Muslim world. He said Obama told him that one of his top priorities was to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math and engineering.” Improving relations with the Muslim world was a top foreign policy priority for Obama upon taking office last year, and he delivered a major speech on the topic in Cairo in June 2009. Last week, the White House sought to clarify Bolden’s comment, saying Obama wanted NASA to engage with the world’s best scientists and engineers from countries such as Russia, Japan, Israel and many Muslim-majority countries. That failed to end the controversy. Gibbs was asked at his daily news briefing why Bolden had made the comment. “I don’t think — that was not his task, and that’s not the task of NASA,” Gibbs said. The question was posed by CNN’s Ed Henry and can be found at 18:45 on the video linked here (transcript via WhiteHouse.gov ): Q    I wanted to ask you, there are some comments that the NASA Administrator, Charles Bolden, made a couple weeks back that drew some interest, specifically from conservatives who are wondering why we he said that one of the charges that the President gave him when he got the job was that he had to focus on outreach to the Muslim world.  Why is the NASA Administrator doing that? MR. GIBBS:  That’s an excellent question, and I don’t think — that was not his task, and that’s not the task of NASA. Q    So did he just misspeak? MR. GIBBS:  I think so. Q    Has the President spoken to him about that clear it up? MR. GIBBS:  No. Q    Anybody here at the White House? MR. GIBBS:  I’m sure people — people at the White House here talk to NASA all the time.

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WaPo Finally Runs Story on NASA Administrator Bolden: Eight Paragraphs On Page A13

Examiner’s Byron York: The NASA-Muslim Outreach Story ‘Has Not Made the Cut’

At the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog  (HT Instapundit ), Byron York documents the results of some Lexis Nexis searching: Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the New York Times: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program in the Washington Post: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on NBC Nightly News: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on ABC World News: 0. Total words about the NASA Muslim outreach program on CBS Evening News: 0. As a supplement, here are the results of a search on “Charles Bolden” (not entered in quotes), NASA’s Director, done at 9:00 a.m. ET at the Associated Press’s main site: Additional AP site searches on ” NASA ” and Bolden’s last name only return nothing relevant to the controversy described at this Monday Fox News story (bolds after headline are mine; internal links are in original): NASA Chief: Next Frontier Better Relations With Muslim World NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said in a recent interview that his “foremost” mission as the head of America’s space exploration agency is to improve relations with the Muslim world. Though international diplomacy would seem well outside NASA’s orbit, Bolden said in an interview with Al Jazeera that strengthening those ties was among the top tasks President Obama assigned him. He said better interaction with the Muslim world would ultimately advance space travel. “When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator — he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering,” Bolden said in the interview. The NASA administrator was in the Middle East last month marking the one-year anniversary since Obama delivered an address to Muslim nations in Cairo. Bolden spoke in June at the American University in Cairo — in his interview with Al Jazeera, he described space travel as an international collaboration of which Muslim nations must be a part. For all the new media controversy Bolden’s outreach remarks have generated — which, by the way amounts to about 130 items in a Google News search on “Charles Bolden” (in quotes) done at 9:20 a.m. ET — this later paragraph in Fox’s report is in its own way even more offensive: He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help. Apparently, that would be too “unilateral” or something. Maybe one of the early “beyond low-Earth” missions will be to the moon to remove that offensive American flag that Neil Armstrong’s crew planted there. Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com .

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Examiner’s Byron York: The NASA-Muslim Outreach Story ‘Has Not Made the Cut’

Krauthammer Rips NASA Chief for Declaration to Improve Relations with Muslim World

If you haven’t heard the report of the remarks recently made by NASA Administrator Charles Bolden over what the role of his agency, it’s a little troubling. And it hasn’t gone unnoticed, at least not by syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer Recently, Bolden, in an interview with Al Jazeera English , said that the “foremost” mission of NASA is to improve relations with the Muslim world. This drew the ire of Krauthammer on the July 5 broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier.” (h/t Gateway Pundit ) “This is a new height in fatuousness,” Krauthammer said. “NASA was established to get America into space and to keep is there. This idea to feel good about their past and to make achievements is the worst combination of group therapy, psychobabble, imperial condescension and adolescent diplomacy. ” And how does Krauthammer think this should be handled? Assuming Bolden wasn’t instructed by President Barack Obama to make this gesture, he said he should be immediately fired for deviating from the intended purpose of NASA. “If I didn’t know that Obama had told this, I’d demand the firing of Charles Bolden the way I would Michael Steele,” he continued. “This is absolutely unbelievable.” In the interview in question, Bolden had said he was tasked with doing the following by the President, including the claim the “foremost” mission was for the space agency to reach out to the Muslim world. “When I became the NASA administrator — or before I became the NASA administrator – [Obama] charged me with three things,” Bolden said. “One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science … and math and engineering.”

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Krauthammer Rips NASA Chief for Declaration to Improve Relations with Muslim World

NASA Wants to Make Flying at Mach 1 a Little Greener

Image via NASA With what looks a bit more like a giant lawn dart than an airplane , NASA has a vision for a quieter, more environmentally friendly future for supersonic air travel. Called the Supersonic Green Machine, the airplane was designed by Lockheed Martin to correct a few of the problems that limited its faster-than-sound predecessor, the Concorde–such as that pesky sonic boom issue. But in addition to that, the concept plane prom… Read the full story on TreeHugger

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NASA Wants to Make Flying at Mach 1 a Little Greener

Could A Massive Solar Storm Permanently Change Life As We Know It In An Instant?

Could one massive burst of radiation from the sun cripple satellites in orbit and fry electronics all over the Earth? Could a gigantic solar storm change life as we know it in an instant? Well, if we are to believe what some scientists from NASA are saying, the answer to both questions is yes. added by: Revelation1217