Is that the Moon? Shoot it!!!!

NASA is now planning a trip to the moon with a probe that will one two punch our neighbor. The mission set to occur in February of 2009. This probe will carry a couple of objects to send into the moons surface and strike the surface twice in order to kick debris off of the surface. Once this occurs NASA will analyze the debris that gets lifted off the surface in order to see if water is on the moon. This impact is set to occur at one of the moons poles.


As far as updates for the blog go, this week has been crazy at work. So starting next week I should return to regular updates. Enjoy yourselves!

"Stay On Target"

The NAVY missile frigate U.S.S. Lake Erie launched an SM-3 missile at a failed satellite on Wednesday night. On its first attempt the satellite was destroyed. The destruction of the satellite likely ruptured the fuel tank as was required, therefore, dispersing the toxic fuel in orbit rather than on the ground where it would harm people. This was a very successful firing and great to watch. Check out the video below for some footage of the firing.

A Party Bag of Topics

Just a bunch of small topics to discuss today.


Tonight there is a total lunar eclipse, be sure to get outside and take a look at it. Happens at 10 pm EST and will be the last lunar eclipse visible in the US until 2010. Go outside and take a look, the moon will turn a cool shade of red due to the red wavelength of light that gets bent in the upper atmosphere of the Earth and projected onto the surface of the moon.

__________



Space shuttle Atlantis has returned safely to Cape Canaveral today ending its mission to bring a new piece of the ISS into orbit. The shuttle crew completed many tasks and made a successful mission after nearly 2 months of delays due to a faulty fuel sensor. Good to see Atlantis making another successful flight.


_____________

One of the bigger stories of the day was the NAVY preparing to shoot down a failed satellite in orbit. This has been a huge story for the last few days as the NAVY has had to invest millions ($60 million to be exact) in modifications and man hours to prep and launch this missile. The missile will intercept the satellite and break it into many pieces which will easily burn up on re-entry. The whole reason for the shoot down of the satellite was so that the volatile hydrazine fuel won't spread over land if the fuel was to by chance survive re-entry.


Fun day for aerospace in the news!

HD-DVD Throws In The Towel

HD-DVD is giving up the fight for format supremacy. Today Toshiba officially announced their concession to Blu-ray, finally ending the HD format war. This is a big win for SONY, a loss to Toshiba, and a horrid loss to consumers.

Unfortunately for 1million consumers, their HD-DVD players will no longer be receiving updated media. That includes 600,000 people in North America, although Toshiba promises to continue with support of the players that are already in the hands of consumers.

Personally, I'm not sure why people went out and spent so much on an item that was not a definitive winner. $300 plus on an HD-DVD player until recently and $500 on a Blu-ray player. Seems like quite the expense for something you couldn't be sure would survive this war, but to each his own.

Guess it's time to pick up a PS3, oh wait, first they have to give me a reason to do that. I'll wait for generation 2.0 Blu-ray before I even consider it, that and a $300 price drop!

Top Ten Exoplanets

Space.com has compiled a list of the top ten exoplanets, or planets outside of our solar system. The list is cool to take a look at and I'll cap the top ten briefly right here, if you want to see the full descriptions go here at Space.com


Number 10:

51 Pegasus b, or Bellerphon, was the first planet ever discovered outside our own solar system, earning it position number ten.

Number 9:

Epsilon Eridani b, the exoplanet found closet to our own solar system is only about 10.5 light years away. So close that soon telescopes may be able to visually view it.

Number 8:

Planets called planemos, or sometimes described as rogue planets. These objects have no sun and are objects that never quite ignited into a star.

Number 7:

Planets such as SWEEPS-10 which orbit their parent star extremely fast. In SWEEPS-10 case, orbiting only 740,000 miles from it's star, one day is only 10 hours long.

Number 6:

Upsilon Andromeda b, is "tidally locked" to it's star, meaning one side is always facing the star. This is quite possibly the most temperature variant world in existence.

Number 5:

The youngest exoplanet ever discovered. This planet orbits star, Coku Tau 4, and is less than a million years old.

Number 4:

The oldest planet ever discovered, takes position 3. This planet is 12.7 billion years old, and proves that life could have formed very early in the existence of the universe.

Number 3:

HD209458b orbits every 3 and a half days and is losing mass to solar winds at about 10,000 tons per second.

Number 2:

189733b was one of the first planets to have it's atmosphere tested for composition.

Number 1:

The number one slot for exoplanets is taken by Gliese 581 C. This planet discovery was huge, as this was the first planet discovered which exsists in the zone of a system where life can be supported. This proves that life can exsist elsewhere, whether it's microscopic or larger is anyones guess.

The Poll Ends

Our first poll has ended and the results are shown below:

Question: What's the future of home movie viewing look like?

Answers:

DVD's will remain mainstream: 40%
BluRay will take over the market: 20%
Digital streaming is the future: 40%


Check out the new poll that is now available

Your WIng is in My Body... No Your Body is in My Wing

NASA has recently been testing the new Blended Wing Body (BWB) concept. The new concept takes the conventional build for an aircraft and modifies the fuselage into a lifting surface. The new design could prove to be more efficient and will definitely allow for more passenger space/ cargo space on-board.

The current flight tests being preformed by NASA will for one, validate the airworthiness of the design. Secondly, and most importantly, the tests will give valuable feedback on flight performance. As this is a completely new design and a fairly significant departure from current aircraft design, the aircraft must be tested. The feedback from the test flights will help determine how the BWB design will react in situations and how flight controls will work.

The information gathered from the test flights will allow the refinement of flight control software and basic flight controls for maximum in-flight performance. This new design could be the future of large scale passenger travel.

This design could prove to be very valuable to military forces. The BWB would be able to efficiently carry huge amounts of cargo on-board and may replace the conventional heavy lift cargo planes used in the Air Force today.

This would be a cool sight in full scale, coming to an airport near you!