AstroNews Jan 2002Astronomy, space and ET news. http://www.kahl.net/astro
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Vol.4, No.1 |
AstroNews Jan 2002Astronomy, space and ET news. http://www.kahl.net/astro
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Vol.4, No.1 |
NEW YEAR SPECIAL
STARGAZINGLook up! It sure beats looking at the latest news on TV these days. And it's a great time to observe JUPITER. And Winter is also the best time to check out the constellation ORION. With binoculars you can see the Orion Nebula. As always consult a star map if you're not sure where to look.Also mark these two dates in your calendar:
ASTEROIDS SWING BYTwo hefty asteroids passed close to Earth on Wednesday, January 16, 2002 with at least five more set to swing near by January's end.One of Wednesday's close-approaching asteroids measured between .6 and 1.8 miles in diameter, a big enough space rock to cause catastrophe if it collided with Earth. But asteroid 7341 1991 VK got no closer than 7 million miles, nearly 24 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon. The other asteroid, 2002 AO11, came much nearer -- about 3 million miles -- though at a relatively petite 246 feet across, posed no threat to Earth. |
KC TECHSHOPShop after midnight! Online at the NEW KC TechShop!JANUARY DEALS:
* MONEY-SAVING RANKINGS
Deal$ on Technology:
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SETI@home: WAY COOL
 SETI@home
has over 3.5 million users. They use the SETI@home screen saver software
to search for ET. You can too! Use your home computer to help search for
extraterrestrials!
How? The SETI@home screen saver is a scientific analytical software.
It performs a mathematical operations on data you download from the SETI
program. How's the search coming along? Check this cool description:
SETI@home uses the largest telescope in the world, the Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico, to continuously scan the sky for radio signals. So far no signs of life. Join this community of seekers, and maybe you can be the lucky one who finds ET! Get SETI@home version 3.03:
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ASTROTIP2001 A REAL LIFE ODYSSEY2001 saw successes and failures in space.The most historic happening was the launch of THE FIRST SPACE TOURIST. American multimillionaire Dennis Tito became the first person in history to pay for a trip into space, writing a check to Russian space officials for a reported $20 million to visit the International Space Station. Tito made his journey against strong objections of NASA administrator Daniel S. Goldin and many of the project's 16 international partners. Russia ignored the complaints and launched Tito safely to the orbiting outpost. They brought him back to Earth using a space capsule and converted ballistic missile created four decades ago during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War. A second space tourist, 28-year-old African entrepreneur Mark Shuttleworth is paying Russia for another tourist space trip in April 2002 (see link below). While NASA argued in vain against sending tourists to the space station, assembly of the orbiting base continued. Six space shuttle missions added equipment and components to the station, including the U.S. Destiny space laboratory and an airlock to support space walks. But the space station's most public attention came from the ground, as a $4.8 billion cost overrun on the project was revealed to the incoming Bush administration. To address the problem Goldin assembled an outside panel of experts to review the station's management. The group's report blasted agency management of the project and called for sweeping changes -- including limiting the initial station size to three astronauts. The U.S. came under fire from Canada and the European Space Agency, who claimed the U.S. was defaulting on a pledge for a full-size seven-person station assembly. The White House response to the report and the budget woes was to replace Goldin with former Navy Secretary and NASA budget expert Sean O'Keefe. Fixing the space station's problems will be only one of the tasks new administrator O'Keefe will face. The space agency also canceled the X-33 and X-34 programs -- projects that were supposed to lay the scientific groundwork to build replacement vehicles for the aging space shuttles. A new project to design an advanced reusable launcher, the Space Launch Initiative, got a budget boost this year from the Bush administration. But with budgets growing tighter following the September 11th attacks, it remains unclear if the advanced launcher project will be able to maintain its funding. NASA returned to success in the exploration of Mars, with the orbiting of the Mars Odyssey spacecraft. Two previous Mars flights had ended in failures. While the civil space program saw more explorations in 2001, commercial space continued a decline that began last year. Commercial cargo rockets flew only 59 times during the year, as compared with 86 in 2000. Three of the launches failed, including a European Ariane 5, and two U.S. failures of the small Taurus and Pegasus boosters. Commercial space satellite contracts also declined, with the U.S. share of commercial space off of its 1998 level by 75 percent. A cooling market for satellite services and tougher export requirements were blamed for the losses. The trend is expected to continue in 2002. Experts say the rocket industry contains excess capacity, but that fact
didn't stop two new countries from entering the commercial space race in
2001. India successfully launched its new GSLV space booster in April,
followed by Japan's H-IIA commercial rocket, which made its successful
maiden blastroff in August.
More on Mark Shuttleworth at:
CALIFORNIA IN 3DNASA released finely detailed, three-dimensional images and animations of California. Data collected by the shuttle will help create unrivaled maps of much of the world.The Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) goal is to map 80 percent of the Earth's landmass in unprecedented detail. Most of the United States has already been digitally mapped using data from airplanes and satellites, but the same cannot be said for other parts of the world. So for some areas, the new maps will be 30 times more precise than any previous maps. California stars in new NASA space pics:
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BEAM THIS UP SCOTTY!Even ET would be impressed with this incredible long distance service!SAMPLE RATES from ANY phone in the USA:
We know you'll love the prepaid calling service called Click4Prepaid
from GLOBALCOM. Try it out!
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DISTANT DISCOVERIESIT'S MINT CHOCOLATE CHIPWhat is the true color of the universe?You guessed it. A pale turquoise resembling the color of mint chocolate chip ice cream. That is what one would see if the rainbow of lights that comprise the visible universe were mixed together into one color! The hue reflects the preponderance of the most common kinds of stars, old red ones and young blue ones. A combination of light from the two sources produces green. This discovery could help shed light on the ultimate fate of the cosmos. Read more about this discovery here:
OBJECT NEAR SUNLIKE STAR ON CAMERAHere's another first: astronomers have taken optical images of a giant planetlike body orbiting a sunlike star, making it the closest ever observed around a star through direct imaging.The distance between the substellar object known as brown dwarf and its parent star is less than that between the planet Uranus and the sun. The observation is the latest in a flurry of star system discoveries, some using ground-based technology that in specific situations can make sharper pictures than space telescopes. This implies that brown dwarf companions to average, sunlike stars exist at a separation comparable to the distance between our sun and it's outer planets . In recent years, dozens of distant planets have been found, but only through indirect means, such as observing the gravitational tug on their parent stars. The full CNN article is here:
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BARGAINS IN THE AMAZONAmazon.com has an Outlet! The biggest bargains throughout the Amazon.com universe are here.
Support ASTRONEWS
by using this link:
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FAR OUT FACTS
This is the precise moment at which the history of human funerals was re-written forever… the first interstellar burial of sorts had taken place… for the moon had become the final resting place for some of Dr Eugene Shoemaker's cremated remains which had been sent across space in a glass vial on the Lunar Prospector. The brilliant scientist and discoverer of about 20 comets and 800 asteroids had been laid to rest in style on the moon and opened the door to a whole new opportunity for creative marketers to offer the never-thought-possible: Get yourself buried in space or, better yet, on another planet!! Sounds crazy? Think again! Let's do the math: To have a successful product we have to find a nice niche with lots of people totally eager to lap up the new product or service I am willing to offer. Now, who could we sell this get-buried-in-space idea to? How about the huge community of people called Trekkies. A Trekkie is someone who religiously follows Star Trek in all it's shapes or forms. Here alone we have a group of people numbering several hundreds of thousands around the world who have grown a strong emotional bond with all things pertaining to space. This group is also financially quite stable. A large proportion of Trekkies are middle aged and were weaned watching Dr. Spock's wiggly ears do their thing. Getting on into the middle of their lives this group of people has still not given up on the dream of seeing space… and if not in this lifetime then why not after death… But why talk about if's but's and when's, lets talk about reality: have
a look at their website:
Celestis came, saw and marketed! [Source: http://www.RogerMagnet.com]
NEXT MONTH: THE FIRST ANNUAL ALIEN SPECIAL! |
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