Spirits Predicament

Today NASA announced that the Spirit Rover on Mars is in a bit of trouble. 9 months of trying to extricate the rover from the sand trap it drove into have caused a long term issue for the rover. To survive the harsh winter coming up in May the rover will need to have it's survival heaters running. Those heaters are run by solar power and the current location of the rover might allow too much martian dust to cover the rovers solar panels. In the past the rover controllers have programmed the rovers to tilt the panels at a certain angle to prevent dust accumulation but Spirit is at an angle that may keep the angle too low. They are studying whether Spirit may be more viable to perform stationary tests until the rover eventually fails. Sad but I hope we can gain more insight before Spirit does leave it's twin alone on Mars, which looks to be happening soon.

Once in a ...

Thursday night will mark an occurrence that on it's own happens only once every 2 1/2 years but for it to fall on a New Years eve is even rarer, happening once every twenty years. The second full moon in a calendar month is known as a blue moon. Now you know. Or you would if you read this.

Mars Rovers

So the Mars Exploration Rovers are still going strong on Mars. The mission was only expected to last 90 days and drive a total of about 3/4 of a mile each. They landed on Mars January 3 and January 24, 2004. Each has far outlasted those initial mission requirements. Spirit has driven nearly 5 miles while Opportunity has gone nearly 12. They are experiencing mechanical problems caused by parts wearing out in addition to the harsh Martian atmosphere and terrain, but I hope they continue to serve us for as long as they can.

Disinterested

That's all

Hayabusa

The Japanese built a satellite that has intercepted and landed on an asteroid named 25143 Itokawa. It did so mostly autonomously due to to the great distance it had to travel and the resulting communications lag. It successfully landed on the asteroid and retrieved a sample of the asteroid surface and is set to rendezvous with the earth in Jan 2010 to return its sample. In another first the satellite uses Ion engines for propulsion.

Clean up

Just finished reloading all my music back onto my computer and I went ahead and did something I've wanted to do for a while. I networked our Directv receiver to our media on my pc, we're now listening to 80's hit being streamed from my hard drive

The Restart Button...

I've decided to start blogging again. Not that anyone is gonna read or anything but I have a lot of thoughts on stuff and I want to put them down before senility takes them from me. I have also decided to theme my blog, sort of. I am keenly interested in all things space exploration and astronomical so I will probably be using a lot of that for topics but I won't promise that I'm not gonna go all commercial on ya and post an occasional or not so occasional thought on the weather, my job, or the geo-political situation in Southwest Zimbabwe.