A year after the collapse of the I-35 Interstate West bridge in Minneapolis, the replacement is finished. CNN has posted a pretty cool time-lapse video of the new bridge's construction.
Thirteen people died in the collapse. The nation's roads and bridges are still desperately in need of upgrades and repairs. Here's the news.
Late in May, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft moved into a position in space where it could turn its cameras on the Earth, just as the moon was orbiting in front of it. The result was a series of pictures showing a complete revolution of the Earth, with the moon entering the scene and crossing in front of the blue planet.
Deep Impact was a NASA mission launched in 2005. If flew to a comet named 9P Tempel, and on July 4 of that year, sent a copper impacter to the comet's nucleus to study the resulting crater and analyze the debris it kicked up. The mission was led by the University of Maryland's Michael A'Hearn. After that success, NASA awarded the team an extended mission, dubbed EPOXI. It is scheduled to buzz off to study another comet, Hartley 2 during a 2010 flyby.
The most recent imagery offered scientists a chance to assess what a distant, alien civilization might be able to determine - analyzing light reflected from our planet - about the possibility of life on Earth. That, in turn, suggests strategies that human astronomers might use to assess whether there might be life on planets discovered orbiting stars other than the sun. Anyway, the pictures, combined into an animation, are fascinating. Here's the movie.
Sometimes finding a current picture of the International Space Station can be a problem. Plenty of images have been shot, the best ones by astronauts aboard one of NASA's space shuttles, just before docking or just after undocking.
The problem is that almost every time a shuttle crew visits the station, they tote along a new module, or a new set of solar panels, or radiators, or some other gadget or gizmo that changes the looks of the place. Or, spacewalking crews move stuff around. They'll detach solar panels from one spot, and move it to another spot as the framework to hold them grows.
Anyway, here (above) is an image just released showing the station as it looked earlier this month as the shuttle Discovery backed away after delivering the Japanese Kibo science module. It's the latest, best portrait of the station as it currently exists. Or, at least as it looked while the Russian cargo transport Progress (left) was attached. It's the section at the center of the image with the X-shaped solar panels. If it's not gone already, it will be before long. The changes in the station over the years, and consequently its brightness when observed from the ground, have changed dramatically. Here, for example, is how it looked in 2006.
And here is how it looked in 2002. And finally here is how it looked in 2000 when it consisted of two Russian segments and one NASA segment called Unity.
In two more years NASA is scheduled to shut down its shuttle program. After that, we'll have to wait for the debut of the Ares program before we'll have the capability in the U.S. of launching manned vehicles to the ISS or anywhere else. We'll be relying on the Russians to put astronauts aboard the ISS.
Mostly the Ares series is being built to serve NASA's manned lunar landing hardware program, called Constellation, which will add the manned Orion capsules to the Ares boosters.
The Ares V is expected to be capable of putting 286,000 pounds into low Earth orbit, comparable to the old Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts to the moon in the late '60s and early '70s. The space shuttle's lift capacity is about 50,000 pounds.
NASA's Phoenix lander is busy scooping Martian soil and dumping it into the laboratory's cooker. Spacecraft controllers have released another amazingly sharp image of the bleak scene as their shovel hovers alongside the solar panels that are powering the whole enterprise. Here's a better look.
The first data from the cooker - analyzing the chemical contents of the dirt - are due back shortly. For a gallery of Phoenix images, click here.
They're calling it the "Snow Queen," for reasons we shall not touch on here. But it is the highlight of a spectacular photo mosaic sent back by NASA's Phoenix Mars lander.
It reveals an apparent layer of smooth ice, lying just beneath a thin layer of dirt that was blasted aside as NASA's Mars Phoenix lander touched down a couple of weeks ago.
The mission's prime objective is to document the presence of water ice in the Martian arctic, and to test for the presence of life - past or present - in what once was a much wetter planet.
It appears that the first objective may already have been met, at least in part. Hard to imagine what the Snow Queen might be if it isn't ice of some sort. It looks as if the lander's landing retro-rockets not only blew aside the thin layer of soil at the landing spot, but also briefly melted the ice. It looks as though the ice softened, and flowed a bit before refreezing. Or perhaps the thrusters melted those little holes in the ice.
In any event it is a most intriguing image, and far more than the mission's planners expected to see when they maneuvered the camera arm under the spacecraft. Also visible, just to the right of the footpad, is a tiny white spring, partially buried in the dirt. It's believed to be from the "bio-barrier" door that was opened after landing. Our littering of Mars continues.
Here's one for the Gee Whizz! Dept.: NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter was ready for the landing of the Mars Phoenix mission on Sunday. It's primary role was to relay radio signals and photographs after the lander touched down in the Martian arctic. But it went one better.
The orbiter, circling the planet some 500 miles above the surface, normally looks straight down to gather images of the surface of Mars.
But on Sunday controllers turned it from vertical to an oblique angle to watch as the Phoenix lander arrived and entered the Martian atmosphere. And they switched on the orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRise) - a telescopic camera -in an attempt to snap a photograph as Phoenix made its descent.
And darned if it didn't work. The image at left shows Phoenix dangling from its partly unfurled parachute, minutes before it separated from the 'chute and settled to the surface with its retro-rocket engines blazing.
It's the first time any spacecraft has ever been imaged by another while landing on another 
celestial body. Amazing. Meantime, the Phoenix pictures just keep coming down from Mars.
Here's a link to the mission's main Web page. Enjoy it. You paid for it.
UPDATE: NASA has released an even better, high-resolution image of the lander during its descent, along with a wide-angle shot showing the spacecraft against the backdrop of a huge crater. Even more amazing.
Taiwan's Formosat-2 satellite has captured some striking images of the geological changes and structural damage caused by the May 12 earthquake in China's Sichuan province.
Landslides have ripped forests, roads and farm fields from hillsides, and landslide debris has dammed rivers, creating 21 new lakes in the Sichuan Basin. The resulting flooding has inundated villages and fields. And more flooding is possible as the lakes continue to rise, or burst through their quake-built earthen dams.
The quake also brought down bridges and other infrastructure in the province. See before-and-after photos above.
Astronomers once rolled their eyes when amateurs or professional colleagues reported seeing flashes of light on the moon. It had to be their imaginations, or cosmic rays striking their retinas.
But years of careful observations have proven the flashes of light are real. Scientists have now documented more than 100 such flashes, which they've concluded are the visible-light emissions from meteor impacts.
Incoming meteors generally burn up in the Earth's atmosphere. But there is no significant atmosphere on the moon, so the space rocks zoom into the lunar surface as tremendous speeds. 
The kinetic energy is transferred to the lunar rock and dust, which melts and cools, causing it to glow briefly for the cameras. Look on the upper left of this image.
The pace of these flashes increases as the Earth passes through dense regions of space dust - the same ones that cause meteor "showers" on the Earth. Then things calm down. But they never really stop. There are plenty of rocks and dust particles floating around in "empty" space. And just as anyone can spot a stray meteor or two on any clear, dark night, the same sort of objects pepper the moon's surface all the time.
That, of course, poses risks to the astronauts who will one day return to the moon and establish permanent bases there. Scientists say the risk of a direct hit on these tiny encampments will be negligible, but there is a more considerable danger that shrapnel from a strike - which will fly off in 
all directions in greater volume and at high speeds - will be something worth worrying about.
NASA labs have been studying the problem. Here's a photo of a strike by a pea-sized glass impactor into a target of simulated lunar dust at 16,000 mph.
Photo credit is Peter Schultz, Brown University and NASA.
NASA has combined digital imagery from Mars Global Surveyor - a satellite orbiting Mars - with data from one of the twin rovers now cruising the surface of the Red Planet to produce a nifty digital movie. It takes viewers on a sweep across the surface, and over the Columbia Hills (named for the space shuttle that was destroyed on re-entry in 2003).
From there we soar out over the Martian plains again, turn, and shoot high above the hills, where we zoom in on the tiny rover Spirit as it continues to rattle across the surface. It looks pretty darn lonely out there.
To view the movie, click here. Here's a link to another, similar flight movie.
Two spiral galaxies in collision - Hubble/NASA
Like two spinning saw blades slicing through each other, a pair of spiral galaxies collide in this Hubble image of an object called NGC 6050. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore has released 59 new images of galaxies in collision, part of a celebration today of the 18th anniverary of the orbiting observatory's launch.
Collectively titled "Galaxies Gone Wild," the photos constitute the largest collection of Hubble images ever released at one time by the Institute.
"Galaxies have a wild side. They have flirtatious close encounters that sometimes end in grand mergers and overflowing 'maternity wards' of new star birth as the colliding galaxies morph into wondrous new shapes," the institute said.
The variety of collisions documented in the images is amazing, as is the detail provided by Hubble's superior optics.
Astronomers estimate that only a couple of galaxies in a thousand are experiencing a collision as we see them in the night sky. But most, if not all of them, have likely undergone collisions or mergers in their past. In fact, scientists believe that's how the big galaxies we see today got started - through the merger of smaller clusters of stars and small galaxies going back to the earliest moments of the evolution of the universe.
The simple elliptical galaxies we see today are believed to be products of the mergers of graceful and complex spiral galaxies millions or billions of years ago.
Our own spiral Milky Way is no exception. Baltimore astronomer Massimo Stiavelli said recent discoveries suggest that the Milky Way is currently digesting the stars of a small "dwarf" galaxy consumed not too long ago.
It was noticed when astronomers began measuring the movement of stars near the center of the galaxy - in the direction of the constellation Sagitarius. "When you measure very accurately the positions and motions of the stars," Stiavelli said, "there are some stars that move differently than the others, as if they are coming from another object."
The Magellanic Clouds - two small galaxies visible from the Southern Hemisphere - are close companions of the Milky Way. They are believed to be connected to our galaxy by a slender stream of gas, perhaps drawn away under the gravitational influence of the Milky Way. It's not exactly a collision, but it is certainly a gravitational interaction.
And in time, astronomers say, the grand spiral Andromeda Galaxy - another relatively close companion of the Milky Way, is expected to collide and merge with it.
Happily for anyone alive in that time, these collisions are not as violent as it might seem. The stars in a galaxy may be connected by gravity, but they are actually very far apart. In a "collision," virtually all of them will pass by each other without actually crashing.
And the time scales of these events - 10s to 100s of millions of years - are so vast that no individual living thing would see any movement.
Continue reading "Galaxies in collision; a new Hubble spectacular" »
Lonar Crater, a curiosity in India since the 19th century, was long thought by some to be a volcanic crater. It sits, after all, on a vast and ancient volcanic lava outflow.
But there have also been doubters. In 1973, scientists identified a type of glass found in the crater as a sort that only forms during high-velocity impacts. So, scientists are now persuaded that Lonar is a meteor crater, site of an impact 35,000 to 50,000 years ago. You might say Lonar looks quite lunar.
Sorry. Anyway, you can read more about the place here. This photo was snapped in 2004 by NASA's Terra Earth-Observing Satellite. If you want to delve deeper, click here.
NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter swung within 6,000 kilometers of Mars' moon Phobos last month and snapped this remarkable close-up photo.
Planetary scientists think they can explain some of the light-colored markings, which seem to reveal where dark soil has skidded down the inside of the giant Stickney Crater, revealing lighter-colored subsurface soils. But they're at a loss to explain the many nearly parallel tracks down the outside of the crater.
They look like toboggan trails to me. Maybe it was a snow day, kids got the day off and went sledding down the hill. Like they do on the lawn at Greenwood in Towson on snow days in Baltimore.
Or maybe it's those danged off-road yahoos, digging up the dirt on yet another wilderness hillside.
Anyone else care to guess? You can read more about it here.
The European Space Agency's Jules Verne Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV) is making its first attempted automated docking with the International Space Station this morning. You can watch it live on NASA TV.
Observers on the ground have been watching the ISS and ATV for days as the latter has gradually closed the distance between itself and the station.
UPDATE: Docking successful at 10:45 a.m.
Kinda reminds me of the X-Wing Fighters in the Star Wars movies. Stumbled across this less-than-successful attempt to build and launch a life-size X-Wing ship. Duck!
Arthur Hickman, a government geologist in Australia, was cruising Google Earth last summer, looking for iron deposits, when he stumbled across a curiously round divot in the desert 600 miles northeast of Perth, in Western Australia.
Suspecting it might be a meteor crater, he submitted the find to an Aussie expert in such things. After a visit to the site, the expert has confirmed Hickman's suspicions.
The hole in the ground appears to be the latest of 173 confirmed meteor craters around the globe. It is 850 feet wide and almost 100 feet deep, and experts figure it is 10,000 to 100,000 years old. You can read more about it in the Sydney Morning Herald.
Do you think Hickman is right? Here's a link to more craters catalogued on Google Earth for comparison.
Have a look at the Hickman Crater for yourself. Here's the crater's link on Google Earth.
Credit:NASA
Frank’s previous post with the space station photos reminded me that I’ve been meaning to post the link to a NASA site with really cool pictures of Mars. Above is a false color image of volcanic activity on the Red Planet. See, it isn't all red.
For others, go to here. Some of the images are amazing.
NASA has released the latest photo of the International Space Station, which has been under construction 200 miles in space since 1998. The latest addition was the Columbus science module, delivered last month by astronauts aboard the space shuttle Atlantis. They shot this photo as they were leaving for Earth. For a better look, click here.
The ISS looks different after just about every shuttle expedition. They've been adding modules, and solar panels, and radiators. And they've been moving them around as more structural components arrive. The station is now a very bright object in the sky after dusk or before dawn. Don't miss an opportunity to watch it fly over. Those are your tax dollars at play up there.
For flyover predictions, watch the Sun's Weather Blog, or the back of the print Maryland section, or the online version of that Weather Page here, . Or, visit the Heavens-Above Web site for predictions tailored for your location.
Here's how the station appeared in 2002:
And in 2000:
I was looking for information about a new Northrop Grumman-built probe that will be heading for the moon next winter when I stumbled across some very cool video. It's a test strike by a Northrop Grumman unmanned aerial system (UAS) called Hunter. Here's the link. It's the second of two videos on the page.
The MQ5B Hunter is designed to provide battlefield commanders with real-time reconnaissance , surveillance and targeting information. And when equipped with a laser-guided weapon called Viper Strike, it can take out that target.
In the video, we see a car or truck, apparently being towed behind a tank. (How'd you like THAT job?) The Hunter targets the truck and POOF! it blows up. The company touts it as a "low-collateral damage" weapon. But you don't want to be in the bullseye.
