science@nasa

NASA battles solar storm with rubber chicken

Calm down, already. NASA swears that the Earth absolutely, definitely will not be annihilated by a massive flaming belch from the sun this year.

But just in case you're still a little worried, you'll no doubt be reassured to know the august space agency is holding nothing back in its efforts to study the sun's activity in 2012. In fact, it's even gone so far as to enlist the help of a very, very serious group of high school students, equipped with that most serious of scientific instruments: the rubber chicken.

Yes, students of Bishop Union High in Bishop, Calif. -- along with their mentor, Science@NASA's Tony Phillips, and a group of fifth-grade assistants -- recently launched a rubber chicken into the stratosphere during the most intense solar radiation storm since 2003.

Don't post a nasty, budget-related comment just yet, though. This wasn't any old astrorubberchicken; this was Camilla -- the mascot of NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory -- and she was wearing a specially knitted spacesuit complete with high-tech sensors for measuring radiation. She was also accompanied by a specially modified lunchbox equipped with four cameras, two GPS trackers, a cryogenic thermometer, two-dozen sunflower seeds, and seven insects.… Read more

Space inspires sci-fi. NASA uses sci-fi to inspire

Want to boost NASA, inspire a new generation of scientists and engineers, and help humanity explore space? Write a science fiction novel.

That's the idea behind a collaboration between the U.S. space agency and publisher Tor-Forge Books: NASA scientists and engineers will work with Tor-Forge writers to produce NASA-inspired works of fiction that tap concepts from the space agency's missions and operations.

Giving science fiction writers access to NASA brainiacs seems good. But I'm a little queasy about a government agency influencing popular culture to promote itself. And exactly how science fiction-worthy are NASA operations? Still, it could be worthwhile. Many a scientist, engineer, and astronaut credits science fiction with sparking their career.

And it may go further than that. In my case, science fiction was inspiration for writing about science and technology. (Not all of us are called to do the heavy lifting.) I wonder whether science fiction has produced more hacker-coders, wannabe space travelers, or aeronautical engineers. … Read more

Report: Aliens might destroy us because of our gases

It's not just the threat of another recession that tells us we're destroying ourselves. We express it in every alien movie ever made.

Save the Earth. Save the Earth. A question that, increasingly, offers the question: "Why?"

Still we, cranially deficient as we are, prefer to muse about "when?" and "how?" Well, the earthy Guardian points me to a new report, written by three researchers from Penn State, and published in the journal Acta Astronautica (PDF).

The report suggests that it's just remotely, theoretically possible that the green, blue, and orange … Read more

NASA to look into Toyota acceleration issues

With major questions still unresolved about sudden acceleration incidents in Toyotas and other vehicles, Washington is turning to NASA engineers and the broader scientific community to examine everything from mechanical defects and human error to electronic controls and electromagnetic interference.

On Tuesday, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced the start of two major investigations designed to look deeper into potential causes of unintended vehicle acceleration, which have been tied to a number of accidents, including some fatal ones. The issue has blown up into a major problem for the auto industry and for Toyota especially, leading to a massive … Read more

'When We Left Earth' series to take off on Discovery Channel

NEW YORK--On Tuesday night, the Discovery Channel hosted a few hundred guests at the American Museum of Natural History's Hayden Planetarium for a preview of When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions, filling the audience up with cocktails called "The Liftoff" (a tequila sunrise in a rocket-like champagne glass) and then packing us all into the planetarium's theater to watch some cool retro space visuals.

The miniseries got its start when Discovery embarked upon a project to archive old NASA footage in a high-definition format as a commemoration of the agency's 50th anniversary. It evolved, … Read more

NASA institute to study moon science

NASA said Tuesday that it plans to establish a new lunar science institute, in the hopes of laying the groundwork for future missions to the moon.

Called the NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI), the institute will open March 1, 2008, at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, but it will draw on work from teams across the country. (Ames similarly runs the distributed Astrobiology Institute.) The goal is to build an interdisciplinary study of the moon, building on other scientific research products funded by NASA.

NASA plans to form four or five teams to research areas including lunar science … Read more

Upstart unveils tourist space suit

HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE, N.M.--Fashions for private space travel are becoming reality.

On Saturday, the Washington, D.C., start-up Orbital Outfitters showed off a prototype of its first pressurized suit for the commercial space industry here at the 2007 X Prize Cup, a two-day space and air show.

The suit, called the IS(3)C (for Industrial Suborbital Space Suit-Crew), is specifically designed for pilots who will man an upcoming generation of suborbital rockets. Companies including Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin and Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic plan to send four or five tourists at a time up on … Read more