“I don’t like honors. I’m appreciated for the work that I did, and for people who appreciate it, and I notice that other physicists use my work. I don’t need anything else. I don’t think there’s any sense to anything else. I don’t see that it makes any point that someone in the Swedish Academy decides that this work is noble enough to receive a prize. I’ve already got the prize. The prize is the pleasure of finding the thing out, the kick in the discovery, the observation that other people use it. Those are the real things. The honors are unreal to me. I don’t believe in honors. It bothers me, honors. Honors is epilets, honors is uniforms.”

- Richard Feynman

Winning the Nobel Prize [video]

The First Man & Woman In Space: Yuri Gagarin & Valentina Tereshkova

Possible fragments from Tunguska meteorite may solve 100-year-old mystery

It wiped out 2,150 square kilometers of forest, has left meteorologists stumped for more than a century and been the subject of a role playing mystery on Nintendo’s Wii and DS. Now, 105 years after the Tunguska Event in Siberia, Andrei Zlobin of the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Vernadsky State Geological Museum claims to have found the first and only clue to what caused the impact. And as it turns out, it’s been sitting in his lab, unnoticed, for the past two decades.

According to his paper on the find, published at arXiv.org, Zlobin picked up stone samples from the bottom of Khushmo River on his way back from an unsuccessful field research trip to the Suslov depression in 1988, an area where much of the damage at Tunguska is visible. He had dug a series of holes in the permafrost, looking for potential meteorite or comet fragments at depths of 1908 soil levels, but to no avail. On his way back he collected around 100 stones from the riverbed, but failed to examine them until 2008.

When he finally studied them, Zlobin found that three of those stones exhibited signs of melting (one has a particularly glass-like surface with bubbles). They also feature regmalypts on their surface — fractures that occur when meteorites soar at great speeds towards Earth, causing fragments to vaporise off as atmospheric gases rip around them. Although the impact of the hit is estimated to have been 1,000 times more powerful that the Hiroshima bomb, the heat of the impact is not thought to have been hot enough to melt any rocks on Earth’s surface (according to samples taken from trees affected in the area). Hence, Zlobin is claiming the rocks exhibit all the markers of being meteorite fragments. He does, however also assert that the density of whatever hit Tunguska (about 0.6g per cubic centimetre) matches up with density measurements of Halley’s comet’s nucleus, so a comet has not been ruled out. 

Although Zlobin admits there is plenty more work to be done — chemical and isotopic analysis is needed to find out what’s going on inside the three rocks — it’s an interesting find. Tunguska has left the scientific community stumped for over a century for several reasons. Although it’s presumed the impact was the work of a comet or meteorite (some argue an alien being…), the blast occurred in an incredibly remote area of Siberia that was uninhabited and not explored until 1927, when meteorologist Leonid Kulik ventured into the field. He did not unearth any evidence (there were accounts of him finding a similarly glassy stone, but it was lost), and more importantly he was unable to find any evidence of a crater, as has no one since. 

Zlobin’s find will certainly reignite interest in the mystery, but he’s created one of his own in the process. Why would someone who has dedicated much of their career to investigating Tunguska wait more than two decades to study stones retrieved from the area?

The Explosion of the Ariane 5

On June 4, 1996 an unmanned Ariane 5 rocket launched by the European Space Agency exploded just forty seconds after its lift-off from Kourou, French Guiana. 

The rocket was on its first voyage, after a decade of development costing $7 billion. The destroyed rocket and its cargo were valued at $500 million. A board of inquiry investigated the causes of the explosion and in two weeks issued a report. It turned out that the cause of the failure was a software error in the inertial reference system. Specifically a 64 bit floating point number relating to the horizontal velocity of the rocket with respect to the platform was converted to a 16 bit signed integer. The number was larger than 32,767, the largest integer storeable in a 16 bit signed integer, and thus the conversion failed.

The Mars 3 rover

Mars 3 was an unmanned space probe of the Soviet Mars program which spanned the years between 1960 and 1973. Mars 3 was launched nine days after its twin spacecraft Mars 2. The probes were identical spacecraft, each consisting of an orbiter and an attached lander. After Mars 2 crash-landed on the martian surface, Mars 3 lander became the first spacecraft to attain soft landing on Mars. Both probes were launched by Proton-K rockets with Blok D upper stages.

Mars 3’s descent module was released at 09:14 UT on December 2, 1971, 4 hours 35 minutes before reaching Mars. The descent module entered the Martian atmosphere at roughly 5.7 km/s.

Through aerodynamic braking, parachutes, and retrorockets, the lander achieved a soft landing at 45°S 158°WCoordinates: 45°S 158°W and began operations.

After 14.5 seconds, at 13:52:25, transmission on both data channels stopped for unknown reasons and no further signals were received at Earth from the Martian surface. It is not known whether the fault originated with the lander or the communications relay on the orbiter. The cause of the failure may have been related to the extremely powerful martian dust storm taking place at the time which may have induced a coronal discharge, damaging the communications system. The dust storm would also explain the poor image lighting.

A partial image (70 lines) was transmitted. Although this image appears to show the horizon and dark sky, the photograph was taken with a cycloramic camera. This means that to correctly view the photograph it should be turned 90 degrees clockwise. According to the Soviet Academy of Sciences there is nothing, horizon or otherwise, identifiable in the photograph.

No useful data was returned from the Mars 3 lander.

On April 11, 2013, NASA announced that the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) may have imaged the Mars 3 lander “debris field” on the surface of Mars. The HiRISE camera on the MRO took images of what may be the parachute, retrorockets, heat shield and lander. The Mars 3 debris were found by amateur space enthusiasts rummaging through publicly available archived images.

Little Joe II

Little Joe II was an American space launch vehicle used for five unmanned tests of the launch escape system (LES) and to verify the performance of the command module parachutes for the Apollo spacecraft from 1963–66. Launched from White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, it was the smallest of four boosters used in the Apollo program.

Credit: SDASM Archives

The First Geosynchronous Satellite

NASA began development of new communication satellites in 1960, based on the hypothesis that geosynchronous satellites, which orbit Earth 22,300 miles (35,900 km) above the ground, offered the best location because the high orbit allowed the satellites’ orbital speed to match the rotation speed of Earth and therefore remain essentially stable over the same spot. Only 17 months after development began, NASA launched Syncom I, but it stopped sending signals a few seconds before it reached its final orbit. Five months later, NASA launched Syncom II, which demonstrated the viability of the system. The next Syncom transmitted live coverage of the 1964 Olympic games in Tokyo to stations in North America and Europe.

Image Credit: NASA

Gemini X

Gemini 10 (officially Gemini X) was a 1966 manned spaceflight in NASA’s Gemini program. It was the 8th manned Gemini flight, the 16th manned American flight and the 24th spaceflight of all time (includes X-15 flights over 100 kilometres (62 mi)).

After docking with their Agena booster in low orbit, Young and Collins used it to climb another 763.8 kilometers to meet with the dead, drifting Agena left over from the aborted Gemini 8 flight—thus executing the program’s first double rendezvous. With no electricity on board the second Agena the rendezvous was accomplished with eyes only—no radar. After the rendezvous, Collins space-walked over to the dormant Agena at the end of a 15.24 meter tether, making Collins the first person to meet another spacecraft in orbit. He retrieved a cosmic dust-collecting panel from the side of the Agena, but returned no pictures of his close encounter; in the complicated business of keeping his tether clear of the Gemini and Agena, Collins’ Hasselblad camera worked itself free and drifted off into orbit.

Gemini 10 was designed to achieve the objectives planned for the last two missions—rendezvous, docking and EVA. As well as this it was also hoped to dock with the Agena Target Vehicle from the Gemini 8 mission. This Agena’s battery power had failed many months earlier and this would demonstrate the ability to rendezvous with a dormant object. It would be also the first mission to fire the Agena’s own rocket, allowing them to reach higher orbits.

Gemini 5

Gemini 5 (officially Gemini V) was a 1965 manned spaceflight in NASA’s Gemini program. It was the third manned Gemini flight, the 11th manned American flight and the 19th spaceflight of all time (includes X-15 flights over 100 kilometres (62 mi)). It was also the first time an American manned space mission held the world record for duration, set on August 26, 1965, by breaking the Soviet Union’s previous record set by Vostok 5 in 1963.

Gemini 5 doubled the U.S space-flight record of the Gemini 4 mission to eight days. This flight was crucial because the length of time it took to fly to the moon, land and return would take eight days. This was possible due to new fuel cells that generated enough electricity to power longer missions, a pivotal innovation for future Apollo flights.

Mercury veteran Gordon Cooper was the first person to travel on orbital missions twice. He and Conrad took high-resolution photographs for the Defense Department, but problems with the fuel cells and maneuvering system forced the cancellation of several other experiments.

This was the first mission to have an insignia patch. After Gemini 3, NASA barred astronauts from naming their spacecraft. Cooper, having realized he had never been in a military organization without one, suggested a mission patch to symbolize the flight. NASA agreed, and the patches got the generic name of “Cooper patch.”

Servicing Mission 2

After a successful first mission to correct Hubble’s vision in 1993, a second Servicing Mission (STS-82) was launched to the space telescope in February 1997. The goal of this 10-day operation was to enhance Hubble’s scientific capabilities for discovery by conducting a number of maintenance tasks and refurbishing the existing systems.

STS-82 included the installation of two technologically advanced instruments by a crew of astronauts who reached Hubble aboard the Discovery Space Shuttle. Both devices featured technology that was not available when the first designs of the Hubble Space Telescope were produced.

The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) replaced the Faint Object Spectrograph (FOS) and the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph (GHRS) respectively.

NICMOS has enabled astronomers to dig into the nature of dusty galactic centres and to gain valuable knowledge of star and planet formation. Consisting of three cameras, NICMOS has proven effective at providing infrared and spectroscopic observations of cosmological objects. One of NICMOS’s key contributions is having presented the world with the first image of our Universe at near-infrared wavelengths. These wavelengths are not observable to the human eye, but allow us to probe the distant Universe. Endowed with powerful detectors, NICMOS has been able to offer views of our Universe that no other previous optical or ultraviolet device has ever been capable of.

STIS is a powerful spectroscopic device sensitive to light in ultraviolet wavelengths. It employs two-dimensional detectors that gather 30 times more spectral data and 500 times more spatial data than the first generation Hubble spectrographs. STIS is considered to be the most complex scientific instrument built for space science. With its high sensitivity and resolution, scientists have studied the distribution of mass across the Universe, star formation in faraway galaxies, and supermassive blackholes.

The seven-member crew of astronauts who conducted five spacewalks during this mission were equipped with more than 150 crew aids and tools.

Credit: NASA/ESA

Columbia Space Shuttle Disaster Explained (Infographic)

On Feb. 1, 2003, the shuttle Columbia  was returning to Earth after a successful 16-day trip to orbit, where the crew conducted more than 80 science experiments ranging from biology to fluid physics. However, the seemingly healthy orbiter had suffered critical damage during its launch, when foam from the fuel tank’s insulation fell off and hit Columbia’s left wing, tearing a hole in it that later analysis suggested might have been as large as a dinner plate.

The damage occurred just after Columbia’s liftoff on Jan. 16, but went undetected. During re-entry, the hole in a heat-resistant reinforced carbon carbon panel on Columbia’s left wing leading edge allowed super-hot atmospheric gases into the orbiter’s wing, leading to its destruction. 

Killed in the Columbia shuttle disaster were STS-107 mission commander Rick Husband and included pilot Willie McCool, mission specialists Kalpana Chawla, Laurel Clark and David Brown, payload commander Michael Anderson and payload specialist Ilan Ramon, Israel’s first astronaut. 

A subsequent inquiry by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) faulted NASA’s internal culture as much as the foam strike as causes of the shuttle disaster. The Columbia accident ultimately led then-President George W. Bush to announce plans to retire NASA’s space shuttle fleet (which was more than 20 years old at the time) once construction of the International Space Station was complete. A capsule-based spacecraft was planned to replace the shuttles. [Photos: The Columbia Space Shuttle Tragedy]

NASA’s space shuttle fleet resumed launches in July 2005, after spending more than two years developing safety improvements and repair tools and techniques to avoid a repeat of the Columbia disaster. In 2011, NASA launched the final space shuttle mission, STS-135, to complete the shuttle fleet’s role in space station construction. 

Video: Remembering Columbia’s Crew - ‘In Their Own Words’

In 2012, NASA’s three remaining shuttles - Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour - were delivered to museums in Washington, D.C., Florida and California, while the test shuttle Enterprise was delivered to New York City. Under President Barack Obama, NASA was directed to rely on private spacecraft to launch Americans to the International Space Station and return them to Earth. NASA, meanwhile, is developing a new giant rocket - the Space Launch System - and the Orion space capsule for future deep-space missions to an asteroid, the moon and Mars.

Full size Infographic→

Credit: Karl Tate, SPACE.com Infographics Artist

The Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster

27 years ago today, one of the most tragic events in the history of the United States space program occurred.  The Space Shuttle Challenger, on what would have been its 10th mission to space, broke apart 73 seconds after takeoff, ending the mission and the lives of all 7 crew members aboard.  But what exactly caused the space shuttle to explode?

The Challenger Space Shuttle (NASA Orbiter Vehicle Designation OV-099) went on nine successful space flight missions before the disaster that occurred on January 28, 1986.  A little over one minute after takeoff, the shuttle began breaking apart.  The issues compounded, and eventually the spacecraft reached complete structural failure and crashed.

While several variables ultimately led to the disaster, the originating cause is believed to be due to an o-ring on the right solid-fuel booster.  Such o-rings are used to form seals between the various fuel compartments on the boosters.  The failure of such an o-ring and the volatility of the fuels surrounding it caused fire to erupt at incorrect places, causing more failures on the Challenger.  More fires erupted and explosions occurred, eventually causing the spacecraft to change course in its upward flight.  At mach 1.92, it is essential that the space shuttle fly at the proper angle to handle the aerodynamic forces being undertaken.  Unfortunately, the correct angle was eventually lost, causing the Challenger to ultimately and catastrophically break apart.

Image Credit: NASA

Rocketdyne Rocket Motor Tests (1960 - 1969)

Rocketdyne was an American rocket engine design and production company headquartered in Canoga Park, California. Originally part of North American Aviation, it was later part of Rockwell International, then Boeing. In 2005, Rocketdyne was sold to Pratt & Whitney, becoming part of Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne.

Rocketdyne also became the major supplier for NASA’s development efforts, supplying all of the major engines for the Saturn rocket (and potentially, the huge Nova rocket designs). Rocketdyne’s H-1 engine was used by the Saturn I booster main stage. Five F-1 engines powered the Saturn V’s, S-IC, first stage, while five J-2 rockets powered its S-II second stage, and one J-2 the S-IVB third stages. By 1965, Rocketdyne built the vast majority of US rocket engines, excepting those of the Titan rocket, and its payroll had grown to 65,000. This sort of growth appeared to be destined to continue in the 1970s when Rocketdyne won the contract for the Space Shuttle Main Engine. But the rapid downturn in other military and civilian contracts led to downsizing of the company. North American Aviation, largely a spacecraft manufacturer, and also tied almost entirely to the Space Shuttle, merged with the Rockwell Corporation in 1966 to form the North American Rockwell company (which several years later became Rockwell International), with Rocketdyne as a major division.

Credit: San Diego Air and Space Museum Archive

Space Travel: The Interplanetary Tours Reservation Desk

Today, space travel is closer to reality for ordinary people than it has ever been. Though currently only the super rich are actually getting to space, several companies have more affordable commercial space tourism in their sights and at least one group is going the non-profit DIY route into space.

But more than a decade before it was even proven that man could reach space, average people were more positive about their own chances of escaping Earth’s atmosphere. This may have been partly thanks to the Interplanetary Tour Reservation desk at the American Museum of Natural History.

In 1950, to promote its new space exhibit, the AMNH had the brilliant idea to ask museum visitors to sign up to reserve their space on a future trip to the moon, Mars, Jupiter or Saturn. They advertised the opportunity in newspapers and magazines and received letters requesting reservations from around the world. The museum pledged to pass their list on to whichever entity headed to each destination first.

Today, to promote its newest space exhibit, “Beyond Planet Earth: The Future of Space Exploration,” the museum has published some of these requests. The letters manage to be interesting, hopeful, funny and poignant all at once. Some even included sketches of potential space capsules, rockets and spacesuits. The museum shared some of its favorites with Wired for this gallery.

Images: Copyright American Museum of Natural History

Secret Life of Michio Kaku

Every childhood is made up of roadblocks and opportunities. And interviewing our “Secret Life” subjects, we hear a lot about both. But we’d never heard a story quite like the one Michio Kaku told us:

“My parents were born in California. However, during World War II 100,000 Japanese-Americans were incarcerated in large relocation camps. So my parents never had a chance. Their property was confiscated. They lived behind barbed wires and machine guns from 1942 to 1946. And I was born afterwards, when my parents were dirt poor.”

Somehow, after the war, and after their release from the internment camps, Michio’s parents worked to rebuild their lives. They started out with nothing, but put everything they did have into creating a better life for their children. And when Michio began to show that he was more than a little prodigious as a teen scientist, they went along. They went along, even with limited resources and with virtually no idea of what was behind (or could be the consequences) of Michio’s sometimes more-than-a-little-risky boyhood experiments:

“So one day I went up to my mom and I said, ‘Mom, can I have permission to build a 2.3-million electron-volt atom smasher—a betatron—in the garage?’ And my mom stared at me, and she said, ‘Sure. Why not? And don’t forget to take out the garbage.’ So, I went out and took out the garbage. And then I went to Westinghouse. I got 400 pounds of transformer steel, 22 miles of copper wire, and built a 2.3-million electron-volt betatron in the garage. The wire was so heavy, I put the wire on the goal post [of the nearby high school football field] and I gave it to my mother. She ran with this strand of wire to the 50-yard line. My father grabbed it, ran to the goalpost and we wound 22 miles of copper wire on the football field. Well, the magnetic field was so powerful—about 20,000 times the Earth’s magnetic field. If you were to walk by my atom smasher, it would pull the fillings out of your teeth—that’s how powerful the magnet was going to be.”

When Michio actually plugged in his atom smasher, it did, of course, blow out every fuse in his house and likely every fuse for miles around—yet another kid scientist who made the lights go out and the authorities shake their fists (while grudgingly admitting that the kid was pretty smart).

But that wasn’t my big takeaway from Michio’s story.

What grabbed me was that his parents—uneducated about science, returning to the world after years of imprisonment “behind barbed wire and machine guns”—were more than willing to wrap 22 miles of a different kind of wire around the goalposts of a football field… all because they loved their son, had faith in him and his ideas, and wanted him to become the person he was clearly meant to be.

Seems like it all paid off.

Source: PBS.org

Credit: Tom Miller