Ron's Log

Solar Eclipse Map

Provided by NASA. According to the map, the eclipse will begin about 5:30 PM reaching maximum at about 6:40 PM.

Nice, simple illustration of what the eclipse will look like in different parts of California.

SpaceX Launch Scheduled May 19

Saturday, May 19, (backup date is May 22), private, commercial SpaceX will launch a Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral. Atop the Falcon 9 will be a Dragon capsule which will be delivered to the International Space Station.

This will be the first attempt by a commercial company to send a spacecraft to the International Space Station, a feat previously performed by only a few governments. Success is not guaranteed. If any aspect of the mission is not successful, SpaceX will learn from the experience and try again. It is also the second demonstration flight under NASA's program to develop commercial supply services to the International Space Station. The first SpaceX COTS flight, in December 2010, made SpaceX the first commercial company in history to send a spacecraft to orbit and return it safely to Earth. Once SpaceX demonstrates the ability to carry cargo to the space station, it will begin to fulfill its Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract for NASA for at least 12 missions to carry cargo to and from the space station. The Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft were designed to one day carry astronauts; both the COTS and CRS missions will yield valuable flight experience toward this goal.

Video of the first test launch of the Falcon 9 in 2010 is available here.

The Scale Of Everything

From Planck Length (10^-35) to the estimated size of the universe (10²⁷) and everything in between, displayed nicely in this simple interactive graphic.

Asteroid Mining News Conference This Morning 10:30 Pacific Time

You should be able to watch here. That is Planetary Resources, the company whose backers include Larry Page and James Cameron, along with actual scientists. They have a long term plan to mine asteroids, initially for platinum-related elements and water.

Who knows if it was entirely coincidental, but earlier this month a study was released by JPL in lovely Pasadena that examined the very subject of asteroid mining.

The feasibility [of asteroid mining] is enabled by three key developments: the ability to discover and characterize an adequate number of sufficiently small near-Earth asteroids for capture and return; the ability to implement sufficiently powerful solar electric propulsion systems to enable transportation of the captured NEA [Near Earth Asteroid]; and the proposed human presence in cislunar space in the 2020s enabling exploration and exploitation of the returned NEA.

It represents a new synergy between robotic and human missions in which robotic spacecraft retrieve significant quantities of valuable resources for exploitation by astronaut crews to enable human exploration farther out into the solar system. A key example of this is that water or other material extracted from a returned, volatile-rich NEA could be used to provide affordable shielding against galactic cosmic rays. The extracted water could also be used for propellant to transport the shielded habitat.

The report also provides a conceptual design of a flight system with the capability to rendezvous with a NEA in deep space, perform in situ characterization of the object and subsequently capture it, de-spin it, and transport it to lunar orbit in a total flight time of 6 to 10 years. The transportation capability would be enabled by a ~40-kW solar electric propulsion system with a specific impulse of 3,000 s. Significantly, the entire flight system could be launched to low-Earth orbit on a single Atlas V-class launch vehicle. With an initial mass to low-Earth orbit (IMLEO) of 18,000 kg, the subsequent delivery of a 500-t asteroid to lunar orbit represents a mass amplification factor of about 28-to-1. That is, 28 times the mass launched to LEO would be delivered to high lunar orbit, where it would be energetically in a favorable location to support human exploration beyond cislunar space.

They cite Konstantin Tsiolkovskii and his 1903 publication The Exploration of Cosmic Space by Means of Reaction Motors. Here's his biography: Red Cosmos: K. E. Tsiolkovskii, Grandfather of Soviet Rocketry

As I skim on through the study I see that in addition to the actual mining, they also consider the necessary international cooperation and the enhancement of interest of the exploration of space as real benefits.

A 1997 artist's rendering of how it'll look (I wonder if the artist got any letters from Stanley Kubrick's attorneys).

An artist's rendering of what the humans in the asteroid mining program might look like. Most of the heavy lifting will be done by robots, but a human overlord manager on-site will be required. Readers of a certain age will recall the decontamination and ensuing quarantine period after Apollo missions returned from the moon. With our greater knowledge and technology today, plus oversight from TSA, I'm sure our protection from infection by alien parasites, germs and viruses will be unbreachable...as long as each crew includes one tough, intrepid, determined woman who loves cats and waifs.

If the investors are smart (and I think they are) they are also putting together an impressive team of attorneys who will establish some sort of international law, or space law (let's call it "Brannigan's Law") that says things like Worker's Comp in space will be administered only in some fairly governed nation like, say, Liberia. They do so well with the ships at sea.

NASA Presents: Motion Pictures Of The Gas Giants

Saturn, mostly, and Jupiter - plus a couple of little rocky things that might by tiny moons.

March 20 7.4 Quake in Oaxaca Messes Around With Devil's Hole In Nevada

Video shot at Devil's Hole, a pupfish preserve in Nevada that is a non-contiguous part of Death Valley National Park.

A magnitude 7.4 quake had struck near Oaxaca, nearly 1,900 miles away, at 18:02 UTC. You'll hear the people in the video state the time it started was 18:15, so 13 minutes to travel 1,900 miles gives a speed of 8,770 MPH.

The story in Scientific American. More info here about the nature of the seismic waves.

2011 Earthquake Plot

We saw this before for just the area around Japan, but now here's the animated data for 9,323 earthquakes worldwide in 2011:

Coronal Mass Ejection Crashes Into Earth's Magnetic Field - Photos

All photos from last night and tonight.

Iceland by jka33331.

Iceland by Jon Hauksson.

Ruka, Finland by Timo Newton-Syms.

Yellowknife, Northwest Territories by Samantha Stuart.

Djupivogur, Iceland by Óskar Ragnarsson.

Ruka, Finland by Timo Newton-Syms.

Finland by Janne.

Iceland by Olgeir Andrésson.

Iceland by Runólfur Hauksson.

Iceland by Olgeir Andrésson.

Coronal Mass Ejection Coming - or maybe already here

Video of yesterday's coronal mass ejection in two different wavelengths.

From Camilla Corona SDO:

NASA models using data from the Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory (STEREO) and the Solar Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) have now provided more information about the two CMEs [Coronal Mass Ejections] associated with the two March 6 flares. The first is traveling faster than 1300 miles per second; the second more than 1100 miles per second. NASA's models predict that the CMEs will impact both Earth and Mars, as well as pass by several NASA spacecraft – Messenger, Spitzer, and STEREO-B. The models also predict that the leading edge of the first CME will reach Earth at about 1:25 AM EST [10:25 PM March 7 PST] on the morning of March 8 (plus or minus 7 hours) [3:25 PM March 7 PST to 5:25 AM March 8 PST]. Such a CME could result in a severe geomagnetic storm, causing aurora at low latitudes, with possible disruption to high frequency radio communication, global positioning systems (GPS), and power grids.

Live Penguin Cam

It's at Sea World in San Diego where it is a comfortable 25°F.