Here are updates on activities by the Chinese Chang’e 3 lander and Yutu rover since they woke up from their 2 week hibernation during their first lunar night: Updates on Chang’e 3: Rover and lander both awake, good science data received – The Planetary Society
ESA released this video created from images taken by the Mars Express spacecraft, which went into orbit around the Red Planet in 2004:
Ten years ago, on 14 January 2004, Mars Express took its very first images of Mars in colour and in 3D.
To mark the occasion, the team produced a fly-through movie of the ancient flood plain Kasei Valles. The movie is based on the 67-image mosaic released as part of the ten-years-since-launch celebrations in June 2013.
The scene spans 987 km in the north–south direction, 19–36°N, and 1550 km in the east–west direction (280–310°E). It covers 1.55 million square kilometres, an area equivalent to the size of Mongolia.
Kasei Valles is one of the largest outflow channel systems on Mars, created during dramatic flood events. From source to sink, it extends some 3000 km and descends 3 km.
Kasei Valles splits into two main branches that hug a broad island of fractured terrain – Sacra Mensa – rising 2 km above the channels that swerve around it. While weaker materials succumbed to the erosive power of the fast-flowing water, this hardier outcrop has stood the test of time.
Slightly further downstream, the flood waters did their best to erase the 100 km-wide Sharonov crater, crumpling its walls to the south. Around Sharonov many small streamlined islands form teardrop shapes rising from the riverbed as water swept around these natural obstacles.
The Planetary Science and Remote Sensing Group at Freie Universität Berlin produced the movie. The processing of the High Resolution Stereo Camera image data was carried out at the DLR German Aerospace Center.
Amy Heemsoth of the Living Oceans Foundation sent me this announcement:
Inspiring Conservation through Art
Do you love art? Love the reefs? Then please read on.
For this year’s Science without Borders® Challenge, we are asking high school students around the world to use their creativity and inspiration to design poster art following the theme ‘Protect Our Coral Reefs.’ The student’s artwork will portray an action that slows down the degradation of coral reefs.
The Challenge was created to get students and teachers more involved and interested in ocean conservation through various forms of art. Last year’s contest was a video competition themed ‘How are we connected to the oceans?’ It was the first Challenge held by the Foundation.
The Foundation hopes that this contest will continue to inspire youth to become stewards of the environment in order to preserve, protect, and restore the world’s oceans, and aquatic resources – the overarching theme of the Foundation.
For more information regarding the Challenge and contest rules, please visit our website at www.livingoceansfoundation.org/resources/for-educators/gis/.
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Here is a video made by last year’s winner of the competition, which asked high school students to create a video to answer “the question, how are we all connected to the oceans? ” :
NASA will get close to the administration’s requested 2014 budget in the new Omnibus bill: Appropriators Release FY2014 Omnibus Bill, NASA Does Well – SpacePolicyOnline.com
4,113 million for exploration, of which
* $696 million is for commercial crew, with $171 million available only after the Administrator certifies that the program has undergone an independent benefit-cost analysis
* $1,197 million is for Orion
* $1,918 million is for Space Launch System (SLS) of which $1,600 million is for launch vehicle development and $318 million is for exploration ground systems
* $302 million is for exploration research and development
Of course, there is no independent benefit-cost analysis required before yet another $3 billion goes down the SLS/Orion money pit.
More links:
Update:
Update 2:
Update 3: Lori Garver comments on the NASA budget: Twitter / Lori_Garver:
Hill appropriators fund Abu Dhabi CBP and cut commercial crew funding. Ask Congress why they support foreign air & space activities over US?
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Here’s a Planetary Society report on the making of one of the seven mirrors for the Giant Magellan Telescope, which should become operational in 2020.
From the caption:
After spending three months cooling, the GMT’s third mirror was removed from its rotating furnace on Dec. 6, 2013 and unveiled at the University of Arizona Steward Observatory Mirror Lab. It will take another three years for the mirror to be polished to extremely high precision. If the finished mirror were enlarged to cover the continental U.S., the peak-to-valley variance in smoothness would only be a half-inch.
The GMT’s seven 8.4 meter mirrors and adaptive optics system will give it ten times the resolution and sensitivity of the Hubble Space Telescope. It will be able to measure the mass of exoplanets and determine the composition of their atmospheres.
If life exists on one of the 1,000 currently known exoplanets, the GMT may be able to see indicators of life like ozone and chlorophyll in the exoplanet’s atmosphere. Such a game-changing discovery could tell us Earth is not the only planet in the Universe with life.