Category Archives: Space participation

Exoplanet names and nicknames

It appears the IAU misleads the public by claiming Uwingu was doing something wrong in asking the public to participate in simply nominating names for exoplants. It also misleads in claiming that it’s role in technical nomenclature  given to it by astronomy organizations gives it the all powerful right to decide what anyone may call any object in the universe.

This is as silly as the IAU’s claim that a majority vote among a group of astronomers can instantly convert a planet to a non-planet.

Inevitably some exoplanets will have popular names, i.e nicknames, in addition to the technical names used by astronomy organizations.

Russian amateur group may have found lost Soviet Mars lander

A group of Russian space enthusiasts may have spotted an image of a Soviet Mars lander that transmitted for a few seconds after landing on the Red Planet in 1971 before going permanently silent:

Golden Spike Indiegogo campaign update

Golden Spike needs a big boost soon for its Indiegogo campaign. They only have $9,352 of the $240,000 goal. (The goal value represents one dollar per mile for the distance between the Earth and the Moon.)

Note, this campaign was intended not to raise money for directly funding development of their lunar exploration systems. They need a few billion dollars for that. Rather, the idea was to use the campaign to obtain some real data on public interest in lunar exploration. Golden Spike’s primary target market consists of developed countries, especially newly developed ones, who want to have their own human spaceflight programs. GS planned to use the Indiegogo data to help convince such countries that there is great public enthusiasm for lunar exploration. Unfortunately, the tepid response to the campaign doesn’t back up that contention. I think the poor response has less to do with a lack of public interest in private lunar adventures than it does with people thinking the campaign is for funding the GS project and that seems to them to be unrealistic and unreasonable.

Here is a video with Gerry Griffin, Chairman of the Board of the Golden Spike Company and “former director of Johnson Space Center and Flight Director in Mission Control for all of the Apollo Missions”:

Results of a citizen scientist survey

A survey of  people participating in the Galaxy Zoo project provides a profile of the average citizen scientist  : What Makes Citizen Scientists Tick? – MIT Technology Review

The results are curious. Unsurprisingly, Galaxy Zoo volunteers are overwhelmingly male with 82.1per cent being men. There is also a particular over-abundance in the 50-60 age group. Overall, the volunteers have an average age of 43 and over 60 per cent come from the US and UK.

What is mildly surprising is their motivation for taking part. The survey asked volunteers to give their primary reason and this turned out not to be things like enjoying looking at pretty pictures of galaxies or the fun of it all. Instead, more than 40 per cent of volunteers say that the desire to contribute to science is their primary motivation.